CEO Insights Magazine

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are regarded as the most coveted business schools in the country that provide distinguished management education and IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B) is considered one of the finest amongst them. Established in 1973, IIM-B has produced some of the most eminent alumni over the years, starting from former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan to Hasmukh Adhia, former Finance Secretary and Revenue Secretary of India, and Vipul Parekh,one of the co-founders ofBigBasket, who have made some significant contributions to the country at a pragmatic level. Joining the list of these industry stalwarts, Dhanpati Sahu(Founder & CEO, JGDTech)has proved his distinctiveness as one of the noteworthy alumni of IIM-B when he put a step forward to establish JGDTech as a thriving organization across the semiconductor and embedded system services domain. Dhanpati owes his entrepreneurial success to IIM-B, where he was trained with industry relevant traits pertaining to finance marketing, organizational management and microeconomics. On the premises of IIM-B, Dhanpati not only envisaged his journey as one of the prominent business tycoons of the current era but also honed his professional skillsets, which are still helping him to handle his current day to day business transactions.

Dhanpati Sahu engages in an exclusive interaction with CEO Insights.

Having such wide experience in the IT industry, what drives you today as an entrepreneur as well as an industry leader?
The combination of both the theory as well as the practical knowledge gained over the years compliments my journey as an industry leader. Having more than 20 years of industry experience, I can sense the current course of the industry as well as the existing industry gaps

around which we can contribute. My IIM-B education is helping me to amalgamate both my experience and technological knowledge and navigate my company towards the summit of success.

Define JGDTech as an organization. How is it different from other existing players in the market?
Basically, there is a significant gap between the current industrial needs and the kind of services provided in the market. With an aim to cater predominantly around these existing gaps, JGDTech provides comprehensive solutions and services that meet the expectation of our client's business. Working with a notion to mitigate the needs of the industry, we try to focus on the needs of our customers by remaining aligned with our core values such as honesty, inter connectivity, and account ability. Many times, I have seen companies promising something to the client and delivering completely different results, ultimately putting a dent in their overall performance across the industry. Careful about such an undesirable predicament, we always deliver the promised output to our customers and gradually win the trust of our customers. Equipped with a vast managerial expertise side our team is also predominantly engaged to contribute across our success rate.

What major challenges have you encountered in your journey so far? Describe your role as an entrepreneur in resolving those challenges?
For me, the first challenge was to manage the cash flow of the company, as initially, we did not have that kind of funds to run the company smoothly. Secondly, creating the reputation of the company was a big challenge for retaining the employees as well as our customers. Initially, we were looked down on by numerous clients for being a startup company. From the employee's perspective also, many resources hesitated to

join us in our journey because of our startup status. But without getting demotivated, we convinced our clients and employees to join hands with us by showcasing our growth graph and success statistics so far. With time not only their illusions faded but also the market has embraced us as one of the prominent players of the semiconductor domain rather than a startup.

Share some of the major milestones that bestowed you with utmost satisfaction, both as an individual and as an entrepreneur.
When I started this company, I had set milestones in terms of employee count. We have already passed half of those milestones, and hence reside at a happy place right now. This is also an advantageous situation for the company as well because it was able to retain the trained employees within the organization. With these milestones, we are gradually advancing to reach our greater objective of making this organization a much bigger platform.

What are the changes in the market behavior that you anticipate in the upcoming days and what are your future plans?
The onset of the COVID pandemic has changed the market dynamics completely by making it unpredictable. Earlier when COVID-19 started, we were thinking that the market would be very slow and there would be a lot of layoffs. But as soon as the vaccination started, the market turned lively. We are currently experiencing an unexpected surge of demands from our customers' side and it is very difficult to satisfy the customers because of the absence of good resources in the market. We have designed our roadmap accordingly, and to acquire good resources, we have started training our resources to elevate their expertise and simultaneously cater to the needs of our clients. Our next strategy is to increase our organization verticals across multiple locations including India as well as abroad and gradually ascend to greater heights.

Dhanpati Sahu, Founder& CEO, JGDTech
The founder and CEO of JGDTech, Dhanpati is a computer engineer and an alumnus of IIM Bangalore. He holds more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, and manages overall strategic planning and Business Development for JGDTech.