"Enterprising attitude, but not being adventurous is what has kept Artek alive"--Anil Gupta

Started in 1979 as an electronic equipment marketing company, Artek Enterprises (P) Ltd diversified into IT industry in 1984. With specialization in networking for over 14 years now, the company enjoys system integration expertise in network designing with many turnkey installations to its credit. The man behind it all--Anil Gupta--revealed this and much more about how all this started in a tˆte-…-tˆte with DQW News Bureau.

At the outset

"This was not actually the first thing that I wanted to do. After doing my MSc (Physics) from Hindu College and MBA from Chandigarh, I thought of going abroad and start with learning to be a programmer--something that I always wanted to do. The proof for that goes back to 1971, when I did a course in Cobalt and Fortran programming. I did get admissions abroad as well but then due to a family mishap, all my plans for life changed. I could not go and then after my education, started with a business.

Before 'IT' experience

Before actually starting, I had a small stint in CalCom Electronics as a Senior Marketing Manager immediately after MBA. But then I was not interested in doing a job of this nature and thus discontinued it soon enough. Then laid open the road to venture into the business line.

But again I was never really interested in doing a business of consumer goods. And that is because they do not have a technical knowledge attached to it, which leaves no room for any kind of understanding by either the seller or the customer. Also there is nothing new to discover every time you deal with the product and that makes the work boring.

Since my educational background allowed me an edge above the rest, it worked as a germinating ground for an idea to get into the business of networking, heavy duty or industrial products. At that time there was no 'IT industry' as such, so the idea of venturing into heavy industrial equipment came handy. There then started this company which mainly dealt in the heavy industrial products from a small office in Connaught Place in 1979.

The bug bites

In 1984, the IT bug caught me and I thought it to be a booming area to diversify in. As it was destined, by matter of chance in 1985, I came across a company called MRO-Tek, which was into making of modems and LAN drivers--that time a very small company from Bangalore. I had an exclusive tie up with them for selling in northern India.

It clicked

That time, people mainly had mainframes or UNIX-based machines so LAN drivers had a booming market, but it again constituted of only government departments like railways, DESU, defense and big corporate like Bell Labs and institutions like ITI. Volumes surely were not much but margins were very good because of the exclusivity that we enjoyed.

It heightened

In 1986, we became the first dealer of Godrej in the country to sell their inkjet printers then discontinuing that after two years, took up the exclusive dealership for Wipro for their entire range of Epson printers. Another initial tie-up with Aplabs and other couple of alliances in the same field collectively allowed us to have an overall treatment to meet the customers needs.

And then Nehru Place

In 1991, the growing population of the company made it necessary to look out for a bigger space. And Nehru Place was an easy pick over all other areas as most of our dealers and vendors were located in the same area and rents in CP were much higher. Also, one could easily foresee that this was the market to be watched out for future IT selling in Delhi.

The concentration returned

In 1994-95, we stopped the business of peripherals as there were too many people into it and mainly we wanted to concentrate, and then specialize in one field. Also, our networking business had picked up by that time and we were very sure that this would fetch us out of this fish trade market and we would be able to optimize our technical expertise. Thus we were back into better margins by selling LAN products and structured cabling.

Tour de force

Artek has till date handled some of the most prestigious projects in the country--in defense (Air Force, Army, Ordnance Factories); central government (NIC, ministries, election commission, ERTL, DoT); PSUs (railways, MTNL, DoIT, VSNL, IOCL, STPI); corporates (ISPs, banks, newspapers, IT manufacturers); research and educational institutions (IIT, IIIT, NBRI, NDRI), etc.

Our first break was with NIC. We did their entire network cabling for 300 nodes in 1994-95 for their first building. For railways we did the entire ticketing network. And then we became the agents for NIC and did major projects with them. We did the entire network for President's house, PM's office and then all the ministry offices in North Block, South Block, Shastri Bhawan, Udyog Bhawan, starting from 1996 till 1998. Larger networks have been our feats.

The belief

Artek has always believed in the philosophy of cleaving to old-time principals and ethics. We never wanted to run and grow so fast that we fall flat on our face. Today I very proudly boast of not the medals that the industry has given to me, but it is the market reputation that Artek has earned me over all these years. The word of mouth publicity has worked best for Artek till date and most of our business has come because of that."

As told to Gunjan Gupta