"I always wanted to be a master of one, rather being jack of all trades"–Ajay Singhania

One of Seagate’s best performers in the country and for one,
who started from five numbers of HDDs way back in the late 80’s, Ajay
Singhania of Singhania Electronics has definitely come a long way. Now, the
company is better known by name of Venktron Digital Systems. The DQ Week, met up
with Singhania to learn more on this long journey

The beginning

"PD Gupta of Sujata Compu-ters and also my maternal uncle, has always
been my inspiration. According to me, he was the one to introduce the ‘E’ of
Electronics and ‘I’ of IT in India in the early 90’s. There-fore, I was
always interested in new technology, but didn’t immediately plunge, as I had
to start from the scratch.

After completing my gradua-tion in commerce from Delhi
University, I came down to Mumbai. I immediately started working with my uncle,
who was involved in the share market. I worked for 11 years with him and always
wanted to get into IT, but didn’t have the financial muscle to venture into IT
business. As I realized that there was no scope to grow further, I moved out.
Therefore in 1987, I decided to get into the computer market and came to
Lamington Road.

I started by learning and interacting with a lot of dealers
based here. The business only started when I bought five numbers of 20MB Seagate
HDDs, with a minimum amount of finance. I kept trading a small amount of
material and as my financial capacity increased, business also grew.

Initially in 1987, I was opera-ting from my uncle’s home at
Kalbhadevi and formed the company ‘Singhania Electro-nics’ and later on in
1989 ‘Venktron Digital Systems’ was formed for imports. Later on my office
was set up at Laming-ton Road along with both my companies.

At Lamington Road, Venk-tron came to the limelight as I got
stronger in imports. I plunged into imports as its duty structures were high and
therefore, importing made sense. Initially, imports were from Singapore with
brands like TVM. Today in trading, instead of dealing in all kinds of products,
I specialize in HDDs.

Hurdles faced

I was completely alone, as my support was only God. As I lacked technical
know-how, it was a major drawback and therefore, I had to share my profits with
my engineers. But today, I have 10 to 12 engineers in my team. Market was also
small due to which business could be expanded to a limited extent. But margins
were not a hassle like today. Government interferences have always been a
problem and that has still not reduced to a large extent. At that point there
were not many MNC brands, but today they are a big threat.

Future

We also have our own brand called ‘Quest’, which I want to promote and
increase visibility. I have already got into software business, as I have my
commu-nication business catering to clients like Airtel, Syntel, companies based
in South Africa and Germany. This is handled by my younger brother at Bangalore.
I would want to get into retail, but not presen-tly, as I feel the market has to
mature to a larger extent. I believe there will be MNCs and other principals who
will con-sider India as a manufacturing base and I would want to grab this
opportunity to grow to the next level.

Message to the fraternity

I have come up on my words, commitment and honesty. I believe this is the
only stepping-stone to success."

As told to Nancy Sudheer