Managing director and president of KMG Infotech Rahul Gupta is 39 years old. His company, which he has headed for some four years now, has a turnover of Rs 40 crore. The two numbers may be keeping pace. But that’s one place he won’t let age catch up. Actually Gupta, a keen sportsman, wouldn’t have age catch up in other areas too.
At software major KMG Infotech, he brings to the table enough to keep the topline booming. He served on the board of directors of Globsyn Technologies for four years. He was chief financial officer of QAI Ltd for a year. And he has a host of other qualifications.
Although he won his spurs as a finance professional, Gupta does not come from a family of number crunchers. He studied at various schools in Haryana, a big chunk of his education being at Model School in Rohtak. He completed his Plus Two from DAV College, Chandigarh and then joined Punjab Engineering College (PEC) to study mechanical engineering.
Gupta fondly reminisces about the four years he spent at PEC. “They were amongst the best years of my life,” he says. “Living in a hostel taught me a lot of things that one doesn’t learn at home.”
It was more than just engineering, of course. Gupta was a regular at the hiking and trekking club and the rowing club at Sukhna Lake. He played table tennis, billiards and cricket. “One learns a lot from sports,” he says. “Trekking is a wonderful way to test your mettle. Billiards teaches you focus. Most importantly, you get used to losing at regular intervals,” Gupta adds.
Although he enjoyed the “nuts and bolts” of engineering, he soon realised that business and finance were more his forte. He decided to go in for an MBA from Kurukshetra University immediately after his engineering.
The two books he cherished in his student days were Micro Economics by Koutsoyanas and Organisational Behaviour by Fred Luthans. Both taught him critical micro aspects of administration like motivation, organisational development and organisational behaviour. This helped him develop his own brand of management, which is essentially “participative” or “collaborative”, as he describes it.
After completing his education, his ambition was to excel in finance. But since it “was not developed much then and CAs were more preferred for accounting jobs”, he joined the market research department of the Satya Group (now Shalimar Group) as a management trainee. However, in less than a year, his CEO realised his potential in finance and moved him there.
“My three years in that job was a huge learning experience,” says Gupta. “Our job was to analyse performance parameters of group companies. The best part was to examine things from the strategic and macro point of view,” informs Gupta.
One of the significant things he learnt at his first job was to look at any issue from three different perspectives — that of the worker, the manager and the top management. “Analysing things from these three perspectives helps you in making better decisions,” says Gupta.
But the turning point came in 1993 when he joined the venture capital sector. After spending a year in the strategic and planning department of the Western India Group, he joined Risk Capital and Technology Finance Corporation (RCTC), where his role was to identify talent in entrepreneurship.
One of his notable achievements was to invest in Ocean Sparkle Ltd, a port management company which started with a capital of Rs 1.20 crore. Its current valuation stands at Rs 300 crore.
Gupta joined KMG Infotech in 2002. “My goal is to aid KMG’s growth as an institution and be a force to reckon with. The bright, enthusiastic and hardworking Indian professionals are being noticed around the world. This phenomenon is likely to gather pace and we want to act as a catalyst for it,” he says.
With such a vast repertoire of experience in different fields, Gupta is certainly a satisfied man today. Says he, “I can’t say that I have designed my career minutely. But I have stuck to jobs till the time I was enjoying them and was able to contribute significantly.”
His prescription for others who want to tread the same path: “Major and minor obstacles are a part and parcel of any journey. Be patient and work extra hard during those times without brooding too much. Don’t resort to shortcuts. Success is bound to come your way.” It certainly has for him.
As told to Urmi Mukherjee
in Calcutta
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