Malathy G Iyer finds out what makes Jay Desai of Universal Consulting different
What can a post-graduate research student do when he realises that he’s just one among the many students in one of the laboratories in one of the various departments of a school in one of the 3,000-odd universities in the US ? Faced with such seemingly impossible permutations and combination that guard the route to success, Jay Desai decided to pursue the very happening field of management after completing his M S degree in molecular biology from Purdue University, Indiana.
If the story sounds like an all -too- familiar a disillusioned science student straying onto the MBA path, read on. When Jay returned home to Mumbai in 1989, he joined the world’s premier consulting Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) in India. But by 1993, "I started feeling the desire to work for myself and build my own organisation recollects Jay. Thus was born Universal Consulting, a firm which Jay set up in June 1994 to provide "world-class management consulting services to small and medium size Indian companies, and help them cope with competition."
The going was, however, not too smooth."People would come up to me and ask me about how I was going to go about establishing my firm," reminiscences Jay, "and, frankly, at that time, I had no answers All he knew was that was a large demand for quality management consulting services from small to medium-size companies (Rs 5 crore-Rs100 crore) at fees that, were affordable in the Indian context. The main hitch was that Universal Consulting had no data base that his team could refer to before embarking on an assignment. "I spent the first, three months working out of my bedroom on a laptop that I had - brought with money borrowed from a friend reveals Jay. After months of computing the vision and values of UC were re-produced in a wallet-sized card that every teammate carries around.
Two years on and Universal Consulting has an office in Worli, and a team of nine persons drawn from diverse backgrounds ("While I am a molecular biologist, another associate is an English graduate.."), each armed with the trappings of the management cadre - notebook computers, fax/modems and e-mail. In this time, it has worked with Global Tele Systems Ltd, Khandelwala Ferro Alloys Alloys Ltd, Sterlite Industries Ltd, Devidayal Industries Ltd, Faze 3 Exports Ltd, among others.
And any lack of data base, which is slowly getting stocked, is compensated by "an inculcation of reading habits." Jay explains, "Each of us spends one- and-a-half hours every day, perusing business journals published worldwide, to update ourselves with the latest information on management techniques."
For the time Universal Consulting is happy working with small and family-run companies as "these companies are ready to implement recommendations made by consultants." In bigger companies, recommendations are, more often than not, not implemented. However, in smaller firms, one gets the thrill of doing a job that is really appreciated and implemented."
Every case ("we don’t work on more than three cases at a time"), depending on its merit, is given between six months to one-and-a-hall years of Universal Consulting’s time, The UC formula has two areas of importance "We focus heavily on implementation," stresses Jay, and secondly, "we insist on the client providing three to four of his/her brightest persons to the project, on a following time basis, so that we can train them to think like us and drive implementation of the recommendations after, we leave."
One of the greatest strengths of Universal Consulting, according to the 32-year-old Jay, is its staff and their team spirit. "We receive at least one resume a week, but we hire a person only after all the staff has separately interviewed the candidate," he says, ach person is evaluated by his/her peers every three months. In turn, each person evaluates the firm’s performance. "A starter who joins as an associate consultant gets promoted to senior consultant within two to three years, he/she then becomes a principal within two years, before becoming a Vice President."
Keeping in mind the high pressures of their job, Universal Consulting ensures that the work culture is not one of all work and no play. "We play cricket or soccer together and meet for dinner or movies at least once a month," says Jay, who is particular about his sarod riyaz at least three to four times a week.
The future, according to him, "is going to bring in more competition which we will be able to fight with our highly committed and enthusiastic consultants." Any free advice from the management consultant ? And Jay obliges with "the key to good management is time management." Universal Consulting can be contacted at 4960386.
