Inspiration and motivation are everywhere; only if you would just look would you see. Years back, a young 12-year-old boy found his inspiration to achieve greatness while he was in the company of an individual working for Tata Steel. The said individual would speak laurels of Shri JRD Tata, and this influenced the young boy’s mind so much so that he grew a passion for creating something unique. However, it is one thing to have a plan and passion, it is another to follow through and materialize these ambitions. This young boy grew up to be Sudhir Kothari, CEO and Managing Director, Embee Software Pvt. Ltd., and boy did he follow through!
A Commerce graduate from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, Sudhir believed that kindness and teamwork marked the success of any project, plan or business. It is a testament to this belief of his that Embee Software successfully completed 34+ years. In 1986, when India was far from tech-savvy, and smartphones were unheard of, Sudhir keenly followed technological advancements and had an eye for envisioning tomorrow’s needs today. As mentioned earlier, Sudhir brought with him a commerce background and not something shiny from the tech stream. Nevertheless, under his guidance, Embee took its first steps and sold global licenses of Microsoft and Lotus, whose proposals were prepared on typewriters. In 2010, the company gained ranks and became a global Microsoft strategic partner.
Acting on the Vision
As the organization grew, he envisioned Embee as the technology partner for all its customers. However, to further his vision, he had to hire the right employees and streamline the processes. It was incredibly important that he get a team who share the same vision, as the company was looking forward to rapidly extend its operations. So how did he navigate these challenges? In his own words, “It can be solved by being exclusive in terms of ultra-specific advertisements that assist in pre-qualifying candidates. The employee hunt needs to be approached in the same manner as that of a customer-centric marketing campaign. I am thankful to my entire Embee team to ensure we continue to grow even at these unprecedented times. I believe in giving complete operational freedom to my team members to not hesitate to come up with new ideas and try out of the box things. I am here just to guide them and provide a vision for future goals. I strongly believe in ‘Intrapreneurial’ way of working. Every BU leader is the owner of his or her business.”
This open-mindedness and appreciation environment is another reason why most of the employees that the company had onboarded initially continue to serve the company even today. During the pandemic, even with all of its 500+ employees working from home from 10 different cities around the country, there has been no significant hiccups in the business process. This is where the marvel of the technopreneur that Sudhir is come to show. “We clearly defined goals, values, and accountabilities for employees so that they can move the business forward with agility. They can make their own decisions quickly and operate with confidence and use this opportunity to learn and develop,” he says. It is no surprise that Embee could transform 1000+ companies with deep expertise in Cloud, data and apps in the last 4 years.
With a mission to enable organizations transform with technology in a digital, mobile-first, data-driven world, Embee Software Pvt. Ltd today stands as a leading technology partner in India, delivering digital transformation solution to its 2000+ customers. Embee specializes in Cloud and Datacentre Technologies, enabling clients to leverage the latest resources on various Cloud platforms while optimizing costs, through application modernization and serverless computing. Embee also helps customers do more with their data, enabling data warehousing and business intelligence solutions. Embee collaborates with customers to help adopt the most advanced technologies around mobility and security, enabling new-age collaboration in an organization while maintaining information security. Moreover, Embee has a wide portfolio of app offerings for start-ups, ranging from solutions on the Microsoft platform, to integrated ERP solutions on SAP Business One, and a home-grown modular IP, Octane HRMS. To top it all, Embee is regarded for its support services, which includes a remote 24×7 managed services for all its solutions.
Staying true to his motto of changing responsibly with time, Sudhir was able to witness Embee enjoy a growth of 25% CAGR for last 4 years reaching USD 100M revenue by FY20, while the services revenue is growing at 100% CAGR. From being a software reselling to becoming a front runner in the technology solutions and services industry, Embee has now matured into being a trusted technology and strategic partner that’s enabling organizations to leverage a wide range of technologies towards their own transformation.
Having successfully run Embee for close to 3 decades, Sudhir says that his entrepreneurial journey has been an amazing roller coastal ride. Fuelled with a passion for learning, re-learn, unlearn and grow, Sudhir is a prime example that one must transform with time to avoid being left out. “Transformation is crucial to survive and succeed in any situation. Over the years, I have successfully run Embee on a self-sustainable model, so we don’t need to acquire new customers every time just to survive. This is something that I want other companies to achieve. I have always believed in bringing digital transformation to the companies to continue to grow and evolve sustainably. Building a strong company culture and creating something from nothing has been some of the key significant milestones during my entrepreneurial journey. I feel overwhelmed to have a team of having a team that trusts and moves forward with the same goal. “he adds.
Future Goals and Aspirations
Sudhir iterates that the future is digital, and this disruption that the pandemic has forced upon should be wisely used by businesses and institutions to adapt and transform with technology. He says that Cloud computing has become a big game-changer in all the sectors offering the benefits of flexibility, scalability, remote work management, data security, unlimited storage, easy access, pay as you go model, and data analytics.
Many organizations are even shifting to hybrid cloud models to address the need to analyze data closer to the source. Big Data including Application Modernization, Data security and backups will also be important pieces of the digital transformation puzzle in the coming years. “We are geared up to bring Embee’s transformation 2.0, orchestrating solution and services to help make businesses smarter and grow faster. Our long-term goal is to make Embee a complete consulting, solutions, and service provider with industry domain expertise. We are gearing up to be ready for the next wave of transformation by embracing new technologies and enhancing the customer’s value proposition. We also plan to upgrade the skills within the teams to dive deeper into data and app modernization services such as AI and ML and create managed services annuity revenue service stream, which also gives complete visibility,” concludes Sudhir Kothari.