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 Raj
Patil, chief executive officer, Knowledge Management Practice,
Max Ateev, considers Knowledge Management as his personal mission.
He tells Punita Jasrotia how he plans to make his company the leading
player in India
"The
mantra is not just to keep the client happy by adhering to his wishes,
but also to involve the developers, so that they can witness the
success of their products and get instant motivation to perform
better the next time"
Raj
Patil believes that it is his no-nonsense outlook and a realistic
approach towards life that has led to the success of all his endeavours
in business. Patil is the chief executive officer of Knowledge Management
Practice, Max Ateev. The company provides solutions in the areas
of enterprise software, Knowledge Management and outsourced product
development services. Ateev, which stands for “infinite”,
is the spirit behind Patil and his company’s continuous endeavour
to deliver value to stakeholders, customers, business partners,
investors and of course employees.
Patil
started his career with HCL after completing his Bachelors in Computer
Sciences from the Mysore University in 1987. Interestingly, despite
the short stint with the organisation, he considers it the best
ever in his career. Joining as a sales trainee, he calls the year-long
training experience as “baptism by fire”. Put on the job
from the first day itself, the lessons he learnt became his key
survival tactics for the later years.
But
HCL could not hold Patil’s interest for long, as he wanted
to do further studies. He went to the US for his MS in Computer
Sciences from the Villanova University in Philadelphia. After completing
his MS in 1990, Patil joined a company called GMSE, a start-up developing
solutions for the mortgage sector. Though initially on the technical
side, Patil soon shifted his job portfolio to sales and marketing.
“Since the beginning I have been attracted towards a more people-centric
approach, be it in terms of developing solutions or devising marketing
strategies for sales,” he says. However, with the market providing
better business opportunities, Patil decided to start his own entrepreneurial
venture and established two companies (Healthcast and Mindcrossing),
under the Altacast umbrella. Healthcast is an advanced Healthcare
Information Technology provider, which offers a platform for transforming
old hospital legacy systems in the US to new ones. Mindcrossing
is a B2B platform, which helps companies tap their tacit knowledge
and make effective use of it.
The
slowdown and the dotcom bust however took its toll and Mindcrossing
suffered major setbacks. A man who never believes in failures, Patil
decided on reshaping the solutions and finding new markets for it.
He came to India to offer the ‘Mindcrossing Exchange’
solution to Indian corporates and e-marketplaces, to fulfil their
Knowledge Management needs. “We realised that there was a lot
of untapped potential and opportunity for the growth of our business
here,” he says. Based on a people-centric approach, the company
provides a knowledge-based platform called ‘MindCrossing Knowledge
Exchange’ that enables enterprises to unleash and leverage
knowledge, experiences and expertise of employees and partners to
meet business objectives.
According
to Patil the traditional approach of knowledge being managed by
‘central repositories’ (read accumulation of huge databases),
does not solve problems as these databases lack ownership and it
is difficult to motivate people to update and use them. Thus, central
repositories soon get outdated and the purpose is defeated. “People-centric
systems are characterised by links to experts. The solution takes
the information seeker to experts who create and share knowledge,”
he says.
While
KM as a trend has been in the news for the last two to three years,
Patil feels that it is only in the next couple of years that India
will see its implementation on a large scale. With the introduction
of their product, the company is looking at becoming the number
one KM player in the next couple of years. Making an entry last
year, the journey has not been easy for Patil and his team. However,
what has kept him going is the spirit to deliver the best and educate
the industry by demystifying the technology behind Knowledge Management.
“I believe that India as a country has a lot of potential for
our solution. While we have not kept any number targets, the key
focus areas would be pharma/healthcare, manufacturing and the financial
services sector,” he adds.
So
what actually drove him to make KM as his professional mission?
According to Patil, it is the untapped potential of KM, which inspired
him to produce the best. As a result, not only has the company been
able to make an entry as a product entity in the Indian market but
is also optimistic about the growth potential. Compared to software
development, product development faces continuous challenges like
continuous investment or keeping pace with the changing requirements
of the client. Patil is proud of his development team, which has
delivered innovative and quality solutions. “The mantra is
not just to keep the client happy by adhering to his wishes, but
also to involve the developers, so that they can witness the success
of their products and get instant motivation to perform better the
next time.”
In
his 14-year-long career span in the IT industry, Patil has been
a techie, a marketing person and an entrepreneur. Though his roles
have changed through the years, what has remained the same is one
guiding principle a people-centric approach which he believes is
his key to success.
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