what is it like to be an entrepreneur? ft. Mr. Kaytan Shah

Hi, I'm Savni. Hi, I'm Sula. And you're the snake you. Nothing's the same. Hello everyone welcome back to our podcast. Today we have a guest with us who is also an entrepreneur and he's going to introduce himself. So Mr. Keith and Shafi, please introduce us all. I did not hear you properly. What exactly did you say? I just wanted to introduce us all for our audience. Okay. Hi folks, this is Keith and here. I'm running a corporate show, a business, individual business and the name of the business is AL Technologies. I've been into this probably in our 20 years approximately 2020 plus. And I'm here to give them the interview and just let's see how it goes about. So thanks once again for agreeing to be a part of our podcast. So the first session you would like to ask you is how did you come up with the idea of business? Is that something that specifically inspired you to do so? No, basically I'll tell you what happened. I was in NYU for five years. I studied in NYU and I was at New York for five years. But I did not like the lifestyle there basically. So I was in any way planning to return here. I started something on my own over here and from there I took a deviation and I jumped into IT sector. From that place, I mean technology was booming back in 1995. Specifically computers and electronics, IT related electronics, they were booming. So I jumped into that and probably I had studied my subjects were relevant to this industry. And eventually I was a system analyst. I was not a supplier. I mean I did not do MBA or anything as such. But with experience and with the niche time of that industry, I picked up and I supported and I did IT in full-fledged until 2002-2003. Then there's a deviation where I entered because as and when I went through I worked with corporates and all their requirements started coming in. And these corporates usually like one stock solution. You do not hold like you know 15 vendors, 20 vendors if they get one vendor doing everything, they would prefer that more. Because responsibility, delivery, quality, goodwill, everything becomes limited to them and it comes in one single package. The basis of that, I got this idea, I should start corporate solutions. Around 2002-2003 I started with corporate solutions and my vertical and platforms are various multinational, vertical you can say I'm into oil and gas also I'm into farmers also, I'm into retail also and FNL. So you've like truly expanded your business a lot and you've been working for like gas like so many years. You have a lot of experience in the field. So knowing whatever you know now is there something you would have done differently like in the big things or like one thing that you might change. Too early to predict right now because our market is something like a tailor-made market. This market is what I'm doing is a customized thing. See I know except for FNB, except for FNB, I mostly cater to all the products. Maybe automotive, maybe electronic, maybe consumer gold, white gold, maybe a t-shirt, everything. So basically the most different thing that I'm doing right now is there are very limited companies like us who are catering into various vertical various platforms with various clients and giving them various products. Basically we are doing is we are giving a one-stop solution wherein the customer is a makeably metis requirement, he is satisfied and the relationship and the goodwill has pondered over the period. So what happens the customer is not likely to have a concern okay if this product will come not come this is how we choose across India there is pen and air level is there. Suppose if an automotive thing the projects are like you know spend over six months because if I'm saying I'm going to distribute 400 cars or maybe 300 cars this will not happen in one month's time because each one is given the car to his hometown or probably his stay off residence. So these projects projects such work or around six months one project. So they need a vendor who can satisfy their needs who can justify their employees or maybe vendors or maybe distributors to whom they are giving this incentive or product promotion blah blah blah. So this is a very different thing so I cannot comment that you know how different it can be I mean these type of businesses are limited people with very few browns are doing this all are not jumping into the same. So for I will be asking a very broad question for your next day. So how do you like define success in general. I in my last question I answered something success is not something which you need to run around or success is not something that you achieved this that is your success. The first success is there are two things one is from my side and one is from the customer point of view when a customer is satisfied and he's happy with you you've created a good good will and that is your success and from our side it should be job satisfaction whatever I'm doing I should be satisfied I should be inclined to do it and I should rather you know look forward for more challenges that is what I define success because if you have good will if your client is satisfied new set of customers are going to come to you because it goes word of mouth in every corporate it is one person who is going to jump to another another company or maybe another place so he's gonna carry you you're ultimately expanding so this is the way I account success okay. So I think you would talk about like jobs satisfaction in the criteria of an success so during the pandemic I'm pretty sure like you'll have to work in an online environment so what there are like problems you see in terms of that satisfaction or like even whether any restrictions imposed your business that like during pandemic for the first two months probably you can say we just holiday there was no absolutely zero because I if I presume worldwide even except for R&D companies even they were limited to their labs only okay manufacturing and everything was also started only vaccine no-getting manufacture so yes it did effect there was no choice I mean you cannot say that there is a job satisfaction but we have to is all we could think is it's a vacation time the only positive feedback what we looked upon is that we gave a full-fledged family time which we usually could not manage to or you restricted over the weekends or maybe maybe once a month or something like that but that these two months was spread with the family time so it's it's kind of if you take it positively that you got fresh to work again okay so the next session I feel like so now the pandemic is like almost over right so I mean according to me pandemic is not here to work okay but like I'm pretty sure like the difference feeling of the phase of the pandemic and now like the mind be some significant differences in our business so are there or is it the same according to you cyclically saying yes we after the first pandemic east probably for the first two three four months was little different businesses had threats to negligible you can say. Suppose if I put in on a percentage mark from 100 percentage it dropped down to 10 to 15 percent, eventually it picked up but today also I can say my business is doing good but if I go to see overall the cycle has got effect here and because of that effect we all are facing the heat. For example if a raw material manufacturer is affected and he is not supplying raw material to a manufacturing company and a manufacturing company is not processing or unable to produce the material because of unavailability of raw material. So he starts, once the manufacturer gets stuck that means print process, packaging industry, blah blah blah all relevant industries we get affected because if product is not produced these they will not further enhance orders or they will not give orders to the relevant teams and in that cycle ultimately when the finished product comes where we come into the picture. So there is no distribution, no further indenting. So it is a cyclic effect. If somebody says that they are not affected at all then it is the only service industry wherein they have to give purely service that too also like a product service. I am not saying service service but a product service maybe warranties or handling of repairs and services or blah blah blah that is the industry only which is really not affected. They were affected for a while when they were not allowed to travel but sooner it resumed they were enforced but other than that all industries have got affected somewhere or the other. Okay. I am not going to go to the case. So another question is minus, will there any ways that you would like to expand your business like new ways, some new ventures that you would like to take upon or like as of now you think it is stable but enough. As far as my current business is concerned I am not looking to really expand much because my belief is that a bird in the hand is better than two on the tree. The reason is simple. Ketring to a corporate as I told you earlier you need to create a good will to sustain and to get good business and Ketring to them giving them better solutions and looking for more options and more productivity with them is far better than developing a new client or expanding. I am already doing into various platforms and various products. So for me at this even point of time I don't see any expandability right now but yes if you are asking for deviation we are looking ahead for another vertical altogether another business setup but that will take some time. The situation currently is not good enough to invest or to go ahead with the venture. So I think like we went with the last special which is are there any tips or any advice that you would like give to any person who is really trying to enter this market and become an entrepreneur. See a person who is planning to enter into the kind of business setup that we have done. He needs to start with one industry. He also started with one industry and then diverted. So because if you run around for everything at a given point of time you do not have a base point number one point number two you need a clientele also once you have a clientele only then you can look at expansion or reaching out to more potential but unless and until you don't have a clientele you cannot look at this so new entrepreneurs looking to do such type of business multi-platform oriented they should always start with a single vertical give a good shot create a good will be steady for at least two to three years and eventually after three years parallelly look for options and expansion. So yeah basically what are you trying to say is that for a person try to enter this market and first establish this base like it's the first like what is important to one market and then when he's like fully like many years fully establish himself then he should like come on into other markets like for the first two for the first two three years you should establish a stable stable source of income that's but that's advice I don't try to get right. Yeah. I'm sorry actually I was distracted with the phone. I had to call so if you could repeat your question. Yeah so I was trying to just summarize what you said that for a person who's trying to enter this market you should firstly like establish his base that is it should you should like first put his efforts into like one business and then after two three years and he has a stable source of income you should then try to establish his business or his company. Yeah you should look at expansion then thereafter. Yeah absolutely. Okay so I think you can like complete. Change to the answer was simple if you see even logically. Yeah. You run for MBA or doctorate or B firm blah blah blah for that you should have a base. Yeah base is a RISO so that's that's my answer. Three years is your baseline. Yeah but select the baseline something near near around about what you're looking to do and contending list. It should not be something odd which will never match what you're looking at. Yeah. So I think we're done with our questions. We try to keep this a short interview because I love the previous two episodes we like went overtime and it was a bit of a ruckus. So just thank you for joining us. Thanks a lot for yeah and I'll just like pause the recording now. I appreciate thank you. Take care and bye bye.