Press Coverage

Jay Desai, 32, conceived Universal Consulting in March 1994 in Mumbai, with a view to provide world class management consulting services to small and medium size companies at affordable prices. Annual turnover: Rs 1 crore.

LAYlNG THE GROUNDWORK  Based in Mumbai, I did my Bachelors in Life Sciences from the St. Xaviers College. Then I went to the US and did my masters in Molecular Biology from Purdue University. I realized I didn’t want to work in a laboratory for the rest of my life. So, I did my MBA in Information Systems from a private school in Oregon, returned to India and straight- away joined Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) Mumbai office in 1989 and was with them till early 1994.

I found that working with a smaller client was a lot more fun. A big company has a lot of vested interests in different departments and may not want to implement all your recommendations. While, if you work with a small client, nearly all that you say gets implemented. So there is an enormous sense of gratification - you are working directly with the owner of a company - who wants to include everything you suggest as long as its logical.

During that month and a half, I decided to quit Accenture , set up a consulting firm and focus on the small and medium companies, essentially those from Rs 5 crore upto Rs 100 crore.There was a market out there for a traditional consultancy firm that did not just churn out attractive reports but focussed on actually getting stuff done, that too at much reduced rates.

STARTlNG OUT

I was the first in the history of Accenture , India, to quit and start a management consulting firm in March 1994. I hired one person in April.The first three months we worked out of my bedroom, developing our rough strategy and work methodologies using a lap- top that I had borrowed from a friend. Then we borrowed some money, pooled in our savings from Accenture and with a capital of around Rs 2.8 lakh got a second laptop, books and all that we needed to start work. All that we lacked was an office.

While in Accenture , I had worked on projects for Sterlite Industries. I knew the MD from that project and moreover, he stayed in the same building as mine. In a casual conversation he had mentioned that whenever you quit, I want you to do your first project for me. We did just that and since he had been so supportive about the whole thing, we decided not to charge him anything. The project was just a brief five-six week engagement to define the organisation, its structure, job descriptions et al. However, at the end of it, the MD insisted that we accept a fee for the project. And our earnings from our first client were around Rs 2 lakh.

TURNING POINT

Doing our next project for Global Tele-Systems, we started hiring people and there were four guys from our side working in tandem with ten to twelve guys from the client’s side for the duration of almost a year and a half.

Gradually we started hiring people and today, we are eleven people we have seven consultants and two executive assistants. We are in the office only once in a month or two since we have to be present at the client’s site. So the office, the library, the mail and the whole setup is managed by the two executive assistants. By the middle of 1995, we realised that our work was taking off rather well. So we shifted to an office in Worli, first week of July, 1995, which we financed with our own savings and some borrowings from friends. We also hired more people. Today every consultant has a laptop with all the facilities he would need to access, like Internet and e-mail. Recognition was beginning to come our way. Our clients always wanted us to see the implementation of a project through to the end. Gradually, our own clients referred us to others and our portfolio increased.

RULES TO PLAY BY

We want to ensure that the ideas that we come up with get implemented. So, we like to be present during the implementation phase.

At the same time, we like to train two or three young people in the client’s company to think like us, to understand the tools and means that we use, by making them work with us on the team. So when we wind up and leave, the half of the team that stays, sustains the kind of thinking that we want to inculcate in the client’s workplace.

As the demand for our services started growing, we made a conscious effort not hire people en masse just to meet demand, as quality would have suffered. We needed to train the person, which then needed as much as six months. Now, we can hire and train upto three people a year.

We don’t want to grow revenue-wise alone, but also quality wise. Today, if our clients are happy with our work, tomorrow the work quality should only get better, not worse.

We work full time at the client site to understand their operations and work culture. Even in our internal operations we have a very unique culture. ’We hire for attitude and train for skill’. Every candidate is interviewed by all the staff of our organization. Even if one person says ’No’ to the candidate, we do not hire him.

Moreover, we have a social event that everybody takes part in, be it a cricket or soccer match or a dinner party. Another plus point has been that we don’t work as a hierarchical office and have an absolutely free environment. We are also very technology conscious and all our consultants have a notebook computer.

The attributes, which have made it popular among our clients have been high commitment, straightforwardness, and honesty. At times, when people asked us to do things, which we had never done before and we told them so. But they still insisted that we go ahead and try it. Most firms oversell themselves and under perform. While if we are not sure about some- thing, we don't hesitate to let the client know about it. We never promise more than what we are sure we can deliver. We always understand and over perform.

(As told to Vikas Dhoot)