Kamal Nath, Chief Executive Officer, Sify Technologies

For someone who spent 17 years with a Tier I IT services company in India, moving out was the last thing on Kamal Nath?s mind. But then, the 48-year-old CEO of Sify Technologies was never one to pass up on a challenge when it was posed to him.

Leaving HCL Technologies was not easy for Nath for several reasons. He had grown both as a person and a professional there. He had transitioned varied roles and incubated several business lines. He had worked with some of the finest minds in the IT industry. To give it all up and go work for a relatively small but aggressive player in the ICT space was the dilemma he faced. But then, he had faced the dilemma 17 years earlier too.

Also, what convinced Nath to leave in 2012 was the strategic opportunity Sify Technologies offered him and the big change looming on the horizon ? the emergence of the third platform in the ICT industry.

?I felt strongly that a new model, the third platform, was emerging with a huge play for service providers like Sify. Sify is a service provider with a difference, having inherent capabilities in the systems integration, managed services and applications domain. These three attributes, over and above providing infrastructure as a service, are unique to a single service provider. This throws up a great opportunity for us to lead the third platform in India,? says Nath.

We talk in his Noida office on a Sunday, the only day he could spare in his rushed schedule. The neighbourhood is empty, so is the building, but some staff in a conference room are waiting for him to finish the interview with tele.net so that they can show him a presentation required for Monday.

He doesn?t sound like the kind of man who can switch off or who thinks Sundays are sacrosanct. He is passionate about his work and he was happy in his job at HCL Technologies as country sales head in India. He only took up the Sify post because the chairman Raju Vegesna?s exposition of his vision of the future appealed to him and he felt he could meet the challenge.

The initial results are encouraging with customers, both existing and new, selecting Sify Technologies as their ?new age? ICT services partner by moving away from the traditional IT services model. ?What?s exciting is that Sify has all the right ingredients to successfully drive this change. As someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, driving new initiatives and creating new markets is what I have done several times at HCL. My mandate ? which is why I took the job – is to transform Sify from a service provider into an ICT solutions and services partner.?

Sify is today among the largest integrated ICT solutions and services companies in India, offering end-to-end ICT solutions with a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common telecom data network infrastructure reaching more than 1,300 cities and towns across the country. This telecom network today connects 38 data centres across India, including Sify?s six Tier III data centres across the cities of Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.

A significant part of the company?s revenue is derived from enterprise services, comprised of telecom services, data centre services, cloud and managed services, applications integration services and technology integration services. Sify also provides services that cater to the burgeoning demands of the SMB community, much of it on its cloud services platform.

The last two financial years were very significant for the company. A healthy mix of several prestigious contracts, integrated ICT services projects and an unwavering focus on the enterprises in India has helped it achieve profits.

Sify 3.0 – the transformation journey that Nath is spearheading, which has shifted its focus from being an infrastructure services provider to being a solutions and services partner while expanding its global footprint – has played a big role in achieving this growth momentum. He feels that quite a few things are going in the right direction, in terms of customer engagement, profitability and expansion, and plenty of talent in the company to realise the vision. When Nath joined, many of his industry friends also joined Sify with him; they were successful professionals who realised that the industry was changing and wanted to be a part of the next generation of growth.

Given his entrepreneurial bent of mind, the last thing Nath has ever wanted to do is take it easy or, as he puts it, to be a ?caretaker?. This drive prompted him to leave the Larsen & Toubro conglomerate for HCL Comnet when the latter was a mere start-up. ?I always wanted to create something, grow new businesses and markets,? he says.

At Sify, one of his main tasks is to infuse the employees with the belief that Sify can fulfil its immense potential and lead the third platform growth in India. The challenge is to bind all the minds together and drive them to a common goal. That means clearly articulating the company?s long-term strategy and defining every individual?s role. As an active footballer through his school and college days, he knows the significance of teamwork.

In no particular order, here are some of the ideas that have influenced his leadership style:

?At work, as in football, you have a defined role, but you have to go beyond that role if the situation demands it.?

?What got you here, will not get you there.?

?Succeeding with imperfections ? the situation around you may not be ideal, but you have to succeed with the imperfections.?

In a career spanning 22 years, Nath has accumulated in-depth knowledge of systems integration services, ICT infrastructure management services, technology integration services and strategic outsourcing. At HCL, he led various transformational engagements with large enterprises, incubated business lines, created innovative business models and opened up new and high growth verticals for the organisation.

Nath was a founder member of HCL Comnet, the infrastructure services division of HCL Tech, which he joined in Kolkata, and was a key member of HCL Tech?s growth story over the years.

Nath recalls with fondness HCL?s Vineet Nayar as a fantastic mentor. He was good at accommodating Nath?s entrepreneurial passion. In 2009, when he was thinking of leaving to join competition, Nayar called him in and said, ?whatever you want to create outside, create it here. HCL will fund it?. So Nath created a startup business unit within HCL, the Strategic Sourcing and System Integration Group.

These opportunities meant that he never had to think of going abroad for exciting challenges. In fact, he made a conscious decision to not go abroad because he felt that big changes were happening in India, evident from how much large multinational companies were investing in India. It seemed absurd to leave the country when new technologies were being adopted so fast and the market was so large. And then Sify happened.

Nath?s parents are satisfied at his success. And, it has to be said, relieved. Relieved because he was always a bit rebellious and never put his mind to studies. His father was an inspiration to him. He moved to Agartala in Tripura from East Pakistan and had to support a family of eight (his parents, his in-laws, his three children) as the sole bread-earner.

Right from Class 9, Nath Senior used to teach students in order to take care of his education expenses. This example of determination and resilience has been etched on Nath?s mind ever since.

One day, the football coach at Nath?s new school came to see his mother to urge her to let her talented son attend practice sessions with the local First Division players. She exploded. ?I still remember the blasting I got from her later,? he laughs. ?She was furious at the idea of my not concentrating totally on my studies, even though I was a board topper.?

Relaxing these days for Nath usually means watching, rather than playing, football but he is basically a sports-oriented person, so he hits the gym, cycles and swims. The rest of his spare time is spent with his wife Sulata, their son Shaunak and their lovely pet beagle Diego.