The adage ‘Tough times never last but tough people do’ aptly describes Nihilent founder and CEO L C Singh’s philosophy. Singh floated his company during a period when the economy was gearing itself for an impending slowdown. But despite the odds, Nihilent Technologies managed to register steady growth, says Chitra Padmanabhan

In August 2002, when the economy was on the verge of a slowdown and most IT firms were facing plummeting bottomlines, it wasn’t an opportune time to float a company. And for a start-up to consolidate its business and sustain growth was quite a challenge. Undeterred by the gloomy economic scenario, L C Singh decided to embark upon his entrepreneurial venture through Nihilent Technologies. “It was not the best of times to float a company,” admits Singh, “but now we are confident that the going will be smooth since we have already learnt the art of swimming against the tide during rough weather.” Singh—an alumnus of the Harvard Business School had a 17-year stint with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) before he quit to start Nihilent.

Today, Nihilent Technologies has made a name for itself in the competitive solution provider space. Headquartered in Pune, the company has offices in Mumbai, South Africa, UK and the United States. The company offers software solutions to the banking, financial, retail and logistics sectors.

Core focus areas
Nihilent decided to look at quality as its core focus, in order to make inroads into an already mature industry. The company decided to move slowly but surely in a bid to carve a niche for itself. Torn between the temptation to get ambitious and at the same time keeping an eye on the slowing economy, the company decided to progress in stages. In the initial phase, Nihilent specialised in the niche areas of banking and finance, as these were the most promising verticals during the period. “We wanted to move in phases rather than starting a full-fledged activity and so we decided to base our future decisions in tune with the developments in the market,” says Singh.

Nedcor Bank—The strategic investor
Another advantage for the company was that it had chosen a bank to meet its financial requirements. The deal has proved to be a strategic advantage for Nihilent. The company gets a steady volume of business as the bank passes on a major chunk of its IT needs. “It was a timely decision to accept finances from a strategic investor, which also gave us an opportunity to sharpen our core competencies; any other means of finance would have put tremendous pressure on us to make a fast buck, which would have been quite a daunting task considering the circumstances,” says Singh.

Nihilent is handling some of the core projects of Nedcor Bank. A few among them include CRM at Nedcor’s client care centre, credit risk management and monitoring system and generic banking components, wherein the bank had a vision of a unified customer view and a unified business process across channels as well as devices. This necessitated integration of enterprise application systems such as business execution systems, customer information systems, CRM systems, intellectual capital systems, legacy systems and distribution systems like ATM, Internet, contact centre, WAP, etc.

Another key project handled by Nihilent was the home loan project—Orion Interface Development—wherein Nedcor derived the benefits of efficient systems in terms of faster turn-around-time in the processing of transactions and improved customer service. The company’s activities were largely focused on Nedcor Bank in the earlier stage of its inception. Over time, Nihilent has bagged a few projects from other companies, including a rail tracing system project, a US military traffic management command project for P&O Nedlloyd, and the new service program project for South Africa’s revenue service department.

During the inception of the company, Nedcor had a stake of 74.9 percent in Nihilent. Nihilent’s employees hold remaining 25.1 percent of shares. Recently, Nedcor divested 37.45 of its stake to Dimension Data Holdings and this disinvestment decision has enabled Nihilent to achieve a global presence through Dimension Data’s customers. In order to provide qualitative benefits to its customers, Nihilent has forged alliances with various companies like Siebel, for its high-end CRM solution; Gartner, to be well-aware regarding information on IT spending in various industries and keep abreast of technology adaptability trends; Oracle and Microsoft to cater to database, application servers, business intelligence and portals.

Managing responsibility—the Nihilent way
Nihilent also has the credit of being the youngest company to be assessed at SEI CMM Level 4 by KPMG. The company is currently planning to achieve Level 5 certification. “Today, it is a necessity to be adjudged at Level 5 to convince clients that we have the competitive edge,” justifies Singh. The ultimate aim of the company is to reduce the cost of quality and improve the general productivity levels of people through improved processes.

Though Nihilent emphasises on certifications, it has perfected the art of ‘Strategic Responsibility Management (SRM),’ which is also its core philosophy, right from its inception.

To change, and to change for the better are two different things SRM basically proposes that any software development activity can be called successful, only when there is adequate focus on change management. Nihilent firmly believes that a development activity should not be viewed as a one-time project or a service initiative, but rather an activity to cross-check whether the company has achieved what it originally set out to do as a “proof of success.” The crucial factor is to take right decisions on solutions across organisational boundaries, which necessarily incorporate change in processes, people and technology.

Product development
The company’s philosophy of SRM is uniquely reflected in each of its products that lay emphasis on delivering an organisation’s business goals. The company is currently aggressively marketing ProgramHub, which is a management system for enterprises to manage change and appoint people who make the change happen through IT portfolio management, a concept borrowed from financial and asset portfolio management. “IT portfolio management is the skilful handling of resources allocated to a multitude of IT projects in the organisation. A collective view of the IT assets allows easy comparison of project goals and performance,” explains Singh. Another feather in its cap is a product called ‘Technology Level 5’, which enables seamless transaction across all available channels. The company’s product focus revolves around streamlining various processes in the organisation.

Along with the focus on products, Nihilent has also made strategic consulting another focus area. Right from its inception, Singh realised a start-up did not have the option of cutting costs while achieving huge volumes. The low-cost tide would put the company in a disadvantageous position. “Being a start-up, IT consulting was even more critical for us since we could not leverage on the benefits of huge contracts,” says Singh. Before forming the company, Nihilent had two options. The first was to go for a volume-based service offering and compete aggressively with the more established players in the Indian industry. The other option was to create a company that could directly move on to the next level and spearhead the Indian IT industry’s logical ascendance from delivering technology to delivering business value. Having chosen the latter option, Nihilent is now reaping the benefits.

Looking back, Nihilent has achieved what most critics said was not possible. Launching a company at a time when the whole industry was going through its worst time in history was an ambitious task. But Nihilent has proved that whatever the circumstances might be, if the focus is right—a company can come out successfully. This can be seen by the fact that despite being just a two-year-old company, the company is looking to break even during this fiscal year.