RT Outsourcing, journey unplugged

From a startup facing a capital crunch to a company in expansion mode, it’s been a long journey for RT. By Syeda Beenish

RT Outsourcing offers integrated Repairs, Logistics and Fulfillment services for a wide range of IT, Telecom, CE and Electronic Security products. Its services are customized for the front-end customer services and back-end repairs. These are integrated with Logistics, On-site teams and Back-office data centers to provide end-to-end customized solutions. Today, RT Repair and Refurbishment Centers are equipped with state-of-the-art Repair and Testing tools and processes to handle over 150,000 units per month.

Sipping a cup of coffee in his office, Shammi Moza, father of the company, remembered his journey.

A young B Tech, he began his career in IT as a service engineer for IT products at Blue Star in 1986. Within a span of three years, he was made the head of their North and East service division. After four years, i.e. in 1990, Moza joined CMC Ltd. handling HP and Sun hardware.

“During my days with Blue Star and CMC, I learnt the best practises of servicing HP products and also established a good rapport with the HP team,” informed Moza.

While at CMC, the HP team offered them a part-time job for handling select customers, working after office hours. By 1995, the part-time business had grown to an extent where it could no longer be managed on an ad hoc basis. “I took the decision to quit CMC and launch my own company. Thus my RT Outsourcing Services was born,” added Moza.

Early Days

In 1995, the repair business was definitely a major pain-point for all vendors and yet it was an unorganized sector. The concept of outsourcing was new to India and vendors both. Also vendors had apprehensions about the credibility of the new company and its ability to deliver on the strict parameters required. But he was able to overcome all hurdles with a small service team of five employees in the north and the south each.

Like any new set-up, RT outsourcing also faced a capital crunch, but Moza acted as a one man army and took all the responsibilities including HR, accounts, administration and even service delivery on his own shoulders. “RT Outsourcing is my baby, I was responsible for both its success and failure,” he added.

Fifteen years

Over a period of 15 years, RT Outsourcing has evolved as an integrated post-sales solutions and reverse logistics provider, along with infrastructure management and project management services. Many of RT’s old customers, who partnered with it 15 years back, initially employed RT’s services for repairs. Later they came back with business for call centers, went on to contracting installations and commissioning projects and then maintenance services. “Our single window services model ensures that our customers can seamlessly make use of all of our services,” informed Moza.

Owing to rapidly-growing sales, the company set-up a separate marketing and business development department as well as a separate department for customer satisfaction with a team to tackle post-sales service. RT has expanded its operations after considering the pain-points of its customers. Today RT has 4,500+ technically qualified engineers and technicians, 400+ service centers with a presence in 200+ locations across India.

It has not been a cakewalk for Moza to establish but, the company kept adjusting to industry trends. From IT the company has diversified into providing ASP and RMA services to mobile and telecom vendors. Today its clientele includes a healthy mix of leading IT players like HP, Lenovo, Acer, Western Digital, Toshiba, etc, while its telecom business includes brands like Sony Ericsson, UTstarcom, Hughes, NCR, Micromax and Huawei. According to Moza, the success mantra for RT since day one has been the vendors’ support, which meant not only working for them but also meant that their work was appreciated by the principals. HP India is one of its oldest and largest customers.

Recent developments

Last year the company diversified into the fledgling base station commissioning and maintenance business for Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in the telecom sector. Installing and maintaining telecom networks for telecom providers is a booming business as telcos are consolidating their tower infrastructure business and expanding them to rural areas. RT has signed up with the leading equipment suppliers in this space and is now installing and commissioning 2,000+ sites every quarter.

The company has also recently forayed into providing installation and maintenance services for security and surveillance equipment by signing up with Honeywell.

RT has recently been recommended for the ISO 27001 for security management. The company is one of the first reverse logistics service providers to attain this premier security management certification.

It has also set up a new training division called Tech Gurukul to conduct advanced training programs. The institute provides training for in-house projects, customized training for corporates and specialized employability trainings for fresh engineering graduates.

HR focus key to success

Employee retention is the most important part of the HR function. “Thankfully, we have not had any major drop out during the recent slowdown. Above all we also did not announce any layoffs and salary cuts,” added Moza.

RT’s HR organizes a host of programs to boost employee morale including the annual festival Aagaman and the RT little champ 2009 program. Their monthly newsletter RT Horizon also keeps the team informed about their colleagues as they list the achievements of employees.

The recruitment process Ek ka Dus—an internal references program—has improved employee retention. HR keeps a track of the training requirements of the staff, which is fulfilled by the in house Tech Gurukul division.

In the end

The slowdown in IT spending, especially in the corporate segment, has helped the company due to industry consolidation. With the company’s entry into value added services, it designed and aggressively promoted innovative solutions like remote infrastructure management, technical help desk, education in the greenfield area of telecommunication, project management services in IT, Telecom and automation last year.

For the next fiscal, RT outsourcing plans to add the automation business, repair center, installation and repair of high-end switches, networking and storage systems to its portfolio. RT is eyeing the defense segment and plans to venture into the automation space—low voltage security and building management systems. The company has started operations in Singapore.

It is also planning an aggressive expansion of its franchised Authorized Service Partners (ASPs) network. RT looks to the franchisee model to save on the investment and cost of running an office directly. This also creates an opportunity for partners who are into services. Its existing IT service franchisees are trained to provide services in new areas of security surveillance and petrol pump automation. Thereby RT is creating opportunities for its franchisees by helping them widen the scope of their business beyond providing IT post-sales support. At present the company has a little over 300 ASPs and is looking at double digit growth in terms of the number by the end of the ongoing financial year.

“We aim to be one of the leading support providers in the Asia-Pacific region in the next five years, which will also mark a successful two decades,” concluded Moza.