With stressful lifestyles, imploding egos and difficult attitudes, we often wonder whether an enduring marriage is possible in teeming metros. But there are exceptions, with typically arranged marriages where the elders of the family contribute with traditional prescriptions of love and wisdom that help keep the bonding intact, whatever the circumstances. The story of Shalini and Mahesh Singh, founders and partners of Spectrum Data System Services amply testifies to this truth
Mahesh and Shalini Singh are a very talented and creative husband and wife team, living and working from Noida, near Delhi. Doting parents to their 11-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son, these lovebirds have been together now for almost 14 years, creating and collaborating on very exciting projects. Though essentially a sales and marketing professional, and a successful entrepreneur, Mahesh is known for being a man of strong convictions, but someone who talks very sweetly as he reveals exciting aspects of his different businesses including his favourite, and a successful Entrepreneur. Shalini is an event manager, fashion designer and computer buff who enjoys window shopping in big malls and organising gala lifestyle fashion exhibitions.
Together they run a company called Spectrum Data System Services (SDSS) which specialises in providing tailor-made network security systems to different IT and telecom companies. While Mahesh is Managing Director of SDSS, Shalini, a passionate housewife and cook, is his true partner not just in his company but otherwise too as she remained a pillar of strength to him when he faced a lot of ups and some very unexpected downs soon after their marriage. She runs an event management company called Kainalli where she organises luxury lifestyle shows in Delhi's top malls and such other places, especially during festivals, and dreams of making it big internationally too.
Besides working for major Indian IT companies, Mahesh has executed big projects in the very niche Telecom and IT markets of Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. He has also worked extensively in some major countries of the Middle East and Africa including Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to name a few.
In India, his network security operations company has been a great success with well-known telecom service providers like Airtel, Aircel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices Ltd. (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd. (TTML). Though he doesn't have a big team to assist him, a dozen or so experts who work for him, asserts he, are "the best minds in this field."Under the network security division of his firm, Mahesh claims to have done security audits of at least 500 major customers including the NTPC, GAIL, AIIMS, and some of the larger BPOs.
But that is not all. Mahesh is also deeply involved in many other equally exciting ventures. These include farming, event planning, developing holiday resorts for tourists and such others.
Corporate Citizen spoke to this dynamic duo to know how they work together and balance their lives in and out of their working zones.
My father did all the correspondence and spoke with his father. One day I got a phone call that changed the course of my life. He asked me to reach Bhopal. I understood the pressures my parents were under. They had educated and raised me to be independent and self-sufficient. I graduated from Lucknow's best college -Awadh Girls' Degree College and also did fashion designing along with my graduation, in Lucknow. Then I did my master's in English literature from Lucknow University and computers for two years, after which I got a job in Delhi. So, I travelled from Delhi. They came from Lucknow and Mahesh came from Bengaluru. We all reached Bhopal where his parents were settled at that time. That's how we met.''
"I used to write down his goals on paper. I still remember having written somewhere in his diary that he wanted to be the CEO of some company by the age of 30 and by the age of 40-45, he wanted to retire with zero liabilities. After that, whether he would work or not would be at his discretion, unconnected with his income"
MAHESH:"My father was Additional Commissioner (Housing Board) in the MP government and he was also in a transferable job. So I changed schools every three years. My early education was at Satna, near Jabalpur. Then I studied in the prestigious Scindia School, Gwalior, followed by another in Rewa, near Allahabad. Thereafter, we went to Ratlam where I studied in the St Joseph's Convent and completed my X, XI and XII and then there was this classic question: What next? Since I was not a very studious student, but was passionate enough to pursue Engineering in Computer Science which was not available at many colleges except a few IITs, I told my father (who was very close to the then MP Chief Minister the late Arjun Singh) that I could not crack the IIT. Being a good PR man, he used his political connections to get a recommendatory letter from the late Arjun Singh (who was then India's HRD Minister at the Centre) for Patangrao Kadam, founder of Bharati Vidyapeeth in Pune-the most happening city at that time-which shaped my personality, as I did my MBA from its premier management abode, Symbiosis."
"Incidentally, we both come from service class background families. I remember many parents had responded to this TOI advertisement and so I when I reached Bhopal, I must have seen at least ten girls!"
So he rejected nine?
No, he clarifies. "Rejection could have come from their side also. My parents were very conservative. We're still very much connected to our village and samaj in the notorious, hard core dacoit-belt of the Chambal area, near Gwalior. All my cousins and many relatives live in the village. Though dacoits have gone from the Chambal, the mentality of the people there still remains that of the typical, filmi-style thakurs, as depicted in the Irrfan-starrer Pan Singh Tomar. People there still fight bitterly over land and family disputes. They still don't want to come into the mainstream; rather, they take pride in not doing anything, as most of them have self-sustaining livelihoods. My father was perhaps the only person who came out of his village, studied and became Additional Commissioner in the MP govt."
In that kind of a scenario, points out Mahesh, "Inter-caste was absolutely a no-no and hence not an option."
Incidentally, being the youngest and the only son of his parents, Mahesh was a very pampered child, compared with his four elder sisters. "All his life, my father was busy saving money to get them married because dowry was a must among Rajputs those days. So when my turn came, he was very excited and wanted everything royal in my marriage!"
At this time Shalini's father was posted at Sitapur, near Lucknow, as an Additional Commissioner (Sales Tax) when she got married.
"Entrepreneurship is in the air in India at the moment. So, start thinking differently. Open up your mind and act. Just follow your heart and mind. Keep doing it. You'll never fail. Aim for becoming a job giver, not a jobseeker"
So, how did it really click in her favour? Recalls Shalini, "I've no idea because besides myself, Mahesh had to see three, four other girls that day in Bhopal. I don't know what happened there, but the next day we got a call from his side. Our first meeting was in the presence of our parents and other family members. But the next day he said he wanted to meet me again, so we were given a separate table while our family members mingled at a different table at the restaurant."
While Shalini liked Mahesh's simple, earthy looks and humble attitude, Mahesh was immediately drawn to her because he sought a wife who was beautiful, educated, homely, yet working and independent-someone "exactly like her."
So, was it love at first sight? Smiles Shalini, "No, I wouldn't say it was love at first sight but yes, it was mutual liking at first sight. We met in January-February of 2002 and got married in June."
Post marriage, as it happens, everything was rosy and love was very much in the air as she left her Delhi job and reached Bengaluru. But, within days, something happened that gave her the "shock of her life." It happens to all of us, what varies is only the timing!
Just a couple of weeks after their marriage, Mahesh came from the office and told her that he had lost his job, though for no fault of his. Explains he, "For nearly two years, I was working for this American dot-com company which provided online store services. I was in the systems security administration and my office was in the International Tech Park (ITPL), located in Whitefield, near Bengaluru. They gave me just 23 days' notice and said they had to close their offices because their funding had stopped."
The reason was the dot-com bubble burst of 2001-02 which was one of the biggest crashes in the history of US stock trading. Like many other American IT firms, they also had collapsed.
But the timing was so bad that Mahesh felt his self-worth had plummeted rock bottom. More so, as the parents of his newly-wedded wife had wanted to "marry her off to an IAS officer as her father was himself a gazetted PCS officer in the UP government," he points out, adding, "I could imagine how shattering it must have been for Shalini as she, like any girl, was dreaming about our honeymoon at that time."
But, as they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Less than two months into wedlock, and despite having a job in hand, Shalini agreed to pack up because Mahesh wanted to shift to Pune.
Why Pune and not any other city, was because Mahesh had a special bonding with the city where he had completed not just his graduation (in computer engineering from Bharati Vidyapeeth) and post-graduation (MBA in Sales & Marketing from Symbiosis) but had also started his career in 1998 from a company located some 30 km from Pune. Secondly, Mumbai, his second city of choice was close by-where he had enjoyed a lot working with Hill & Associates (1999-2001) and learnt the basics of network security, which was absolutely a new field and in which he later specialised in a big way.
"I don't know how mysterious are God's ways and how he matches two different personalities, because till I got married, I didn't believe that marriages were made in heaven. But after what I experienced in Bengaluru, I felt there certainly was something that gets added up when your soulmate tells you, don't worry, it happens with everybody and we'll face it"
"But now my biggest worry was: how to overcome this crisis as now I had an added responsibility on my shoulders? I spoke to everybody I knew including my friends but it looked like jobs in this sector had dried up in Bengaluru at that time. So I felt, rather than wasting my time and effort in Bengaluru, let me shift to Pune because I had spent many years there and knew many people, and even my career had flagged off from Nira, a small place close to Pune, as a systems administrator with a firm called Jubilant Organosys. But things didn't click and I didn't get any job whatsoever in Pune too."
Chips in Shalini, "Though I'd been with him only for a few weeks, I was confident that something or the other would happen soon."
"Frankly, I never wanted to go to UP, and she never had come to MP, yet we met. Of course, our parents had taken care to get our horoscopes matched, yet all this happened, that too soon after our marriage. The struggle continued for almost a year and a half! She was obviously not happy, but she never showed it. The only saving grace was that financially, I had no problems. Now I strongly believe that marriages are predestined and you cannot feel such attachment with anyone else, "Mahesh says, adding, "One thing that I haven't shared with anyone is that she once asked me: what do you want to do in life? I said, by the age of 30, I have to have these seven things and she said, naukari hai nahi, faltu ki bakwas kar rahe hain."
Explains Shalini, "I used to write down his goals on paper. I still remember having written somewhere in his diary that he wanted to be the CEO of some company by the age of 30 and by 40-45, he wanted to retire with zero liabilities. After that, whether he would work or not would be at his discretion, unconnected with his income."
So what happened when he didn't get a job even in Pune?
Recalls Mahesh, "We went back to Bhopal but I kept trying frantically. One fine morning, I got an offer from a Noida-based company, Network Security Solutions. They also gave me a break to move into the field of sales which always excited me. I was made to handle the government and defence vertical. I started selling network security consulting to firms with IT networks."
"This was sometime around 2003 when data centres were just getting built in big numbers in all major cities. But they all faced a threat that somebody might get in from an IP and steal their data. So security solutions were required to be deployed at various places. But you had to have specific knowledge of where to place what. I had the answer to all such queries, so I did absolutely rocking sales. My boss, Jagdeep Kairon, a very dynamic guy but heavy on expenditure, was very happy. The Ministry of Information Technology was my client and I got great support. My sales figures started shooting up. I developed a large market for my company. As it grew, I grew, and no wonder I soon got a new, more lucrative job offer."
"The children are too young and currently studying in DPS Noida. We certainly want them to do well in their careers but we don't want to pressurise them. Let them grow up and decide what they would like to do. We're trying to give them basic Indian values so that they become sensitive and responsible citizens"
Continuing further, he says, "My boss had so much confidence in me that one day he called me to Chennai and said, I'm giving you an international role. So stop looking at India. Just go to Dubai and come back. I asked, but Sir, what would I do there? He said, it's a paid holiday. Your ticket and hotel booking are done, and you'll get 200 US dollars per day for four days' stay." I went there and had a gala time and when I came back, he said, "I want you to build the Middle East market for me." I said, "But Sir I don't even know the market." He said, "You liked Dubai?", I said, "Yes." "Then keep going there to build up the market." He gave me absolute leverage and so whenever I felt like it, I'd go to Dubai on a paid salary and did whatever I wanted."
"I joined there as sales executive for North India. Based on my performance, in about three months, my boss, sitting in Chennai, gave me the additional charge of East India, and in just seven months, I was heading the international sales of the company!"
How did he develop the Middle East market?
"My boss gave me the address of just one guy, and my friends said, have you gone mad? I said, whatever it is, but now I have do it."
Did Shalini also go with him? Replies she, "No. At that time, I was pregnant. I delivered my baby and within a week, he went to Dubai." Chips in Mahesh, "I soon realised that in the M-E market, more than your product, it is your relationship that sells. So, I focused on developing channels. If I know you are very close to XYZ, I'll first approach you and then you'll take me to set up the same relationship with him. That is how the M-E market works and that's how I also developed good numbers there."
Meanwhile, adds Mahesh, "During one such encounter, I met a guy who was very sharp. He said, I want to own this very business. Will you quit your job and work for me? I said, no, I'm happy. But then he said I'll give you a very good salary, that too in dirhams. You start selling the same product and run this entire division for me. Though it was very difficult for me to convince my Chennai boss, he understood my point when I told him about the intervening officer who was not letting me work peacefully. He agreed, because he also knew how difficult this man was."
"M-E was a new market for me. But he was expecting overnight results. If he wanted $10,000-worth business per month, I was prepared to give him double, but he had to give me the time needed to develop it. He was not ready for that, so I had to leave him. Moreover, this new guy, besides giving me a Dubai salary, was also offering me 25 percent stake in the business and the best part was that I didn't have to invest any money. He wanted me to start with India as a resourcing centre.
Was he an Arab? "No, he was very much Indian, Ajay Singh, but he had settled in Dubai for over 30 years, having many businesses over there. I learnt how to do business in the M-E from him. A thorough gentleman, he liked me and understood how deeply I knew this particular branch. I started working for him from August 2006 and for three years our partnership continued nicely. I was handling information security sales for 23 countries. Besides India, I executed major projects from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, but then, in 2009, things went sour. I gave him business worth more than $5 million but he wouldn't give me my 25 percent stake. I was categorical, I told him, I've done this business three times. I'll now do it all over again. That's how we decided to part and sell each other's stake so as to become 100 percent owners of each of our divisions. This was the story of how I started my own independent business," explains Mahesh with a twinkle in his eyes.
But you must have made lots of money during this period. "Yes, I used to get my India salary plus Dubai salary in dirhams."
Was Shalini also with him when he worked in Dubai? Intervenes she, "At that time, when I first travelled with him to Dubai, my baby was three-month-old. After that, whenever he would go on long trips of say 15-20 days, I would stay in Dubai and he would fly to other destinations. I used to travel with him when it was for two to three days."
So, how did he manage it all when he was on his own?
"Everybody in the industry knew me and not my Dubai boss. They knew it was Mahesh from Spectrum Network Solutions/Spectrum IT Solutions, one of the owners. So when I started my own business, it was only the procurement guy who knew I had changed the company. Nobody else knew it."
But how could he do it? "I just retained the word "˜Spectrum' from the name of my earlier company. I did not use the subsequent words, i.e., Network Solutions/ IT Solutions in naming my own company. I made it Spectrum Data System Services and thus created my own brand."
Didn't people notice it? "Even if they did, for them, I remained the same Mahesh from Spectrum. The soft ware security product they needed was the same, the name Spectrum was the same and the guy who represented it was also the same. So, there was no confusion. And, believe me, since I was ethically correct, my relationship with Ajay remained the same. Though we parted, everything was done very amicably. Even now when I go to Dubai, I stay at his house. Not only that, when I formed my own company, I clearly told him this was what I was doing. Did he have any problem? He said, no."
So how is he doing now? Says Mahesh, "We parted in 2009 and that was the time when my actual growth started. We formed a large company and, by the grace of God, today we have over 350 clients."
MAHESH: Earlier too I was the driving force who created everything, but for others. This time I did it for my own company. I recruited my team members. I have only 12 people for technical operations but they are absolutely the best in the industry.
MAHESH: Earlier I used to say, a good sales guy is the best entrepreneur, but today, I say, a good finance guy is the best one. Anybody can sell a product but not everybody can handle finance, the most important part of a business. You've got to know the ins and outs. That's why, even today, I handle all the finance and sales operations. How to fulfill a commitment and get the payment into your bank account is the success of the sales.
But this thing I learnt the very hard way. I never had any default on payment because whatever I committed to my customer, I fulfilled. Today, besides India, I operate with close to 17 service providers across Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, but I have no issues on payments. In India. Airtel is my biggest customer. I have to just give them a proposal and I get a purchase order. That's the kind of credibility I have.
MAHESH: Yes, providing network security systems is just one of my businesses where Shalini is my partner, but I'm into multiple things and they're absolutely diversified. I'm into camping. I'm into events. I also engage in a couple of tourism-related businesses. I develop resorts. I'm into farming; I still visit my farms in MP. They're my ancestral property and my father had built them up. But, in all these projects, I have partners who are experts in their own fields.
SHALINI: Events came later, but I'm essentially a shopaholic. I love to frequent malls and shop. Though Mahesh doesn't like to shop, I do it for him as also for my kids. I get lots of ideas while moving around these places. I thought of events when I realised that people are ready to buy if you can offer them something different. So, we try to look for things that are different. We organise lifestyle shows, but with new concepts and products. We've been very successful, but we want to make it even bigger with bigger brand names. We're also realising that there is a lot of money in it. It's basically an unorganised sector. We're trying to organise it. Young and talented, Jagmeet Kohli is our business partner. Being an exhibitor himself, he has good knowledge about it and is also a good friend of Mahesh.
"Entrepreneurship is in the air in India at the moment. So, start thinking differently. Open up your mind and act. Just follow your heart and mind. Keep doing it. You'll never fail. Aim for becoming a job giver, not a jobseeker"
MAHESH: I would say, be different. Carve out your own path. Be innovative. Be entrepreneurial. Do something different. Today there is a lot of money in the market and it's circulating. You can grab it if you can show to the world that you have an innovative idea or product. People are ready to buy it. Money is not a problem. Believe me, we're a very rich country.
SHALINI: Mahesh. He knows how to do things. and he also knows how to make me do things. In the 14 years of our marriage, we both know each other's strengths and weaknesses well. So, we keep complementing them as per the needs.
SHALINI: Again, it's mostly Mahesh, because while I'm a straight talker, he talks very sweetly. So, when I say something he'll first agree to it, but then, after some twists and turns, gets his view point accepted and makes me do what he wants. (Smiles.)
SHALINI: I love shopping. Even if I'm tense, I go for window shopping. I'll roam around in the malls and feel relaxed. I also like to cook and something we both love to do is travel. We travel a lot with our kids. Except for Europe and America, we've been to lots of countries in Asia and elsewhere. Sometimes it also happens that he gives me a call to get ready and pack up because we have to catch the flight in just an hour. This happened recently when we went to Hong Kong, but we enjoy such things.
MAHESH: I love reading philosophical books and autobiographies. I also like spending quality time with my kids. I'm an early riser but am usually back home by six and we all go to sleep by 9-9.30 pm. However, before that, we love having a session with our kids where we listen to their stories because that's the time they want to spend with us. In fact, among our friends, we are called 'abnormals' because, they wonder, how can you sleep so early!
SHALINI: Acceptance of each other. One thing my father-in-law told us just a week after our marriage, when we were leaving for Bengaluru from Bhopal. He made us sit and said: You both are perfect for each other and hence never get into the habit of finding faults with each other. Whenever we face any turbulence in our marital lives, we just remember the sage advice of his father.
MAHESH: That's true, and he said so because once you start finding faults, then there is no end to it. So, we keep this thing in mind and give each other our space.
SHALINI: We discuss the issue and it gets resolved.
MAHESH: I don't stretch anything for more than half an hour.
SHALINI: Live happily (laughs).
MAHESH: See, I've been very, very fortunate that whatever I thought, I got. So, I always think positive to get positive results. But the moment I doubt if this would happen or not, it never gets materialised. So, my philosophy is to remain positive, come what may!
SHALINI: In between, he had the option of going back to a job when he broke ties with his Dubai partner in June 2009. But he chose to chart his own path, even though it was risky and involved investing all the money we had.
MAHESH: We are an absolutely jugaadu country. Everything works here on jugaad. But there in Australia, for instance, if I'm working on a project, they will ask me to first file all the required 200 documents, write everything and take an approval before starting your work. Here, we start the project first, do the job, take the payment and then think about paperwork. Similarly, in the Middle East, they are very highly quality-driven. They know they have money, so they don't compromise on quality and insist on all documents before allowing you to proceed on your project.
"We are an absolutely jugaadu country. Everything works here on jugaad. Here, we start the project first, do the job, take the payment and then think about paper work. In the Middle East, they are very highly quality-driven. They know they have money, so they don't compromise on quality and insist on all documents before allowing you to proceed on your project"
SHALINI: At least he's trying to do something but we must also do our bit to support his wonderful initiatives.
MAHESH: When I go to recruit somebody, I don't see his caste or creed. I only go by his qualifications. So, if you thrust something like this upon me, it'll not work.
MAHESH: Entrepreneurship is in the air in India at the moment. So, start thinking differently. Open up your mind and act. Just follow your heart and mind. Keep doing it. You'll never fail. Aim for becoming a job giver, not a jobseeker.
MAHESH: Yes, but the moment I got an opportunity, I grabbed it. Today I say this out of my strong conviction and experience.
They are too young and currently studying in DPS Noida. We certainly want them to do well in their careers but we don't want to pressurise them. Let them grow up and decide what they would like to do. We're trying to give them basic Indian values so that they become sensitive and responsible citizens.
BY PRADEEP MATHUR
