Col. Balwinder Singh, Managing Director, Targus Technologies shares his accomplishments as an army officer and how he worked on the mission of establishing the company in the competitive landscape
Tell us about your journey as an IT solution provider?
At each stage of my army life, I had a mission, including the one in Indo-Pak war in 1971, in which I had the privilege to take an active part. Accomplishment thus became an integral part of my life and on 12th May 1997, when I incorporated Targus, from a small one room apartment, I had a mission to grow it to an exponential level and I feel that I am on the way to accomplish the same.
A difficult journey indeed with a lot of hiccups attached to every milestone but with dedicated colleagues and deliberate focus, it gave me the utmost satisfaction on achieving each one of them. And, today I feel proud that Targus has grown leaps and bounds from the initial platform and is amongst the topmost 5 system integrators in the northern India.
Take us through your current business operations?
We have achieved the highest level of partnership with most of the world class principals across the globe and have established ourselves across 15 locations pan India with head office in Gurgaon. We have strong global footprint with presence in Singapore, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Our strong relationships with giants like HPE, Juniper, Dell, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, F5 Networks, Radware, Fortinet, AMP, VMware, Citrix, and Symantec have helped us come thus far. And we cater to IT, ITeS, telecom, BFSI, government and PSUs, manufacturing, hospitality, FMCG, and retail sectors among others.
Our plethora of services encompasses systems integration, networking and infrastructure (solutions and design), connectivity solutions, messaging solutions, storage and backup solutions, audio video solutions, office automation, FMS, virtualization, cloud computing, and enterprise mobile management. At Targus, we believe in ‘walk the talk’ and thus are constantly ‘simplifying IT’ and giving our clients a well laid tarmac for their IT infrastructure and thereby enabling us to be partners in their fast speed growth.
An inspiring and constant growth rate of 60% since its inception along with its ethical values has given Targus the brand value and recognition that any company craves for. Customer satisfaction is our mantra and thus credibility and constant growth have been our mentors to become a company worth over Rs.150 crore. In 2016-17, the growth rate was close to 30 percent.
How much effort have you put in to become one of the most powerful as well as influential SPs in the country?
Be audacious in your vision, forge stronger relationships with your principles, trim flab to achieve operational excellence, innovate to create extra value for customers, and pursue quality with zeal and good governance. These are a few key mantras we have been working on for years now.
What sort of opportunities do new technology areas like IoT and Artificial Intelligence among others bring it for a solution provider?
Businesses across the world are rapidly leveraging the Internet-of-Things to create new networks of products and services, which are opening up new business opportunities and creating new business models. The resulting transformation is ushering in a new era of how companies run their operations and engage with customers. However, tapping into the IoT is only part of the story.
For companies to realize the full potential of IoT enablement, they need to combine IoT with rapidly-advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, which enable ‘smart machines’ to simulate intelligent behavior and make well informed decisions with little or no human intervention. Over the coming years, ongoing advances in AI will have profound impacts on jobs, skills and HR strategies in virtually every industry— underlining the fact that companies don’t have the luxury of time as they map out their plans for an AI-enabled world. Already, integrating AI into IoT networks is becoming a prerequisite for success in today’s IoT-based digital ecosystems.
