Friends before business partners, Joshi, Patil and Kulkarni began their own venture in 1992, with little money but sincerity and dedication. Having recently joined forces with Vintech, the successful trio, along with new associates Patayeet and Lele, are hoping to once again work their magic in the IT solutions business

Chandan Joshi is a dynamic entrepreneur, with in-depth domain knowledge. His energy and commitment to clients is exemplary. He is the best judge of the present and future trends in IT. Your organization's IT needs are in safe hands with him,” reads a recommendation on Chandan Joshi, one of the new Directors of Pune-based Vintech Electronics, on Linkedin, a professional networking site.

Joshi, a BE in Industrial Electronics, always new he wanted to work for himself. After his graduation, Joshi started his journey as an entrepreneur, by becoming a partner of Micro Shop Inc in 1992, along with his batch mate Dilip Patil.

The journey
In 1999, Micro Shop Inc, which dealt with assembled computers, was renamed Phoebus Technologies. The decision came after the company ventured into branded business and chose Compaq as their business partner. At this juncture, Sushil Kulkarni, Joshi's childhood friend, also joined Phoebus.

From the very first quarter, Phoebus started achieving its targets. “Our first client was University of Pune,” said Joshi. The company also started trading directly with a forging company to get better revenues, as the deal was stuck in US dollars. “At that time prices were not fluctuating. Therefore conducting business in USD was a profitable for us.”

“I think our association with Compaq in the year 1999, was the turning point of our business. After that we never looked back,” said Patil.

(L to R) Chintamani Lele, Dilip Patil, Chandan Joshi, Sushil Kulkarni, Rajeev Patayeet on a family vacation

In 2002, to improve efficiency, the three directors of the company divided the responsibility among themselves. Joshi was given the title of CEO, Kulkarni become the Chief Marketing officer (CMO), while Patil looked after administration and services.

On April 1, 2009, Phoebus Technologies merged with Vintech Electronics, a business partner of HP, dealing in IT hardware, systems integration and office automation solutions, with a strong presence in SMB segment. The two directors of Vintech Electronics, Rajeev Patayeet and Chitamani Lele, were joined at the helm by the three directors of Phoebus Technologies.

The present
Joshi, Patil and Kulkarni will be responsible for the services and enterprise segment, while Patayeet and Lele will continue to look after sales and back end operations, respectively.

With this association, Lele believes that the Vintech team will become stronger and more organized.

“We will now target all verticals of HP including enterprise, consumables and printers which will ensure that we cover the entire product line and market segment,” he said.

He pointed out that the development will help consolidating strength and cut costs. “A better work force will help us to penetrate the market and foray into service segment as well,” Lele added.

Talking about the alliance, Joshi said, “We were both into similar kind of business. But the approach was different. Phoebus, was catering to large enterprises, while Vintech catered to the SMB segment. The merger will fill the gaps and will take Vintech Technologies to new level.”

The challenges
“After the merger, the biggest challenge for the company is to expand it presence in other geographies. We have got a strong team and are present in every market vertical. We now need to explore more business avenues in order to grow,” said Patayeet.

The other challenge was to retain manower. “Salary was never a problem for us. But being a small company, retaining people is a major challenge,” pointed out Joshi.

The present global financial turmoil, which has hit the IT segment hard, is the another roadblock for the company. In fact, the current scenario was one of the contri­buting factors for the merger of Vintech and Phoebus. Elaborating on the economic gloom leading to a cash crisis, Kulkarni said, “Cash flow is biggest problem these days. We waste a lot of time in going around and collecting payments,” said Kulkarni.

The future
Recently, Phoebus Technologies had forayed into the software field, mainly in the infrastructure management and software testing domain. The company is the Gold partner for HP software, exclusive partners in Maharashtra for Tecknodreams, in Bengaluru they are in an alliance with Sapphire IMS Solution. It has also signed up with Websense for their security products range. The directors are hoping that these will open more doors in future.

Men at home
Kulkarni, Joshi and Patil maintain that they will always remain friends before business partners. They enjoy going on holidays together and recently, they took a trip to Mahabaleshwar along with their families.

Joshi enjoys reading management and self-help books during his free time. He is currently reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He also likes to spend quality time with his son and they often go out together to catch the latest flick.

Patil, on the other hand, loves listening to music and playing with his daughter. He also enjoys traveling. “Whenever I find time, I love to travel. I like going to nearby places with my family,” said Patil.

Kulkarni is very different from his friends when it comes to hobbies. The fitness freak is a regular at the gym and loves to play lawn tennis. He is also associated with a spiritual organization called Oneness University.

Patayeet complained that he hardly finds time to do anything for fun. “But whenever I get the time, I make sure that I spend it with my family. Besides, I also go to the gym and indulge in sports from time to time,” he added.

Lele is a movie buff. He loves to watch the latest movies with family and friends. Besides, he also likes reading books and the One Minute Manager is currently his bedside book.

Akhilesh shukla
akhileshs@cybermedia.co.in

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