Tyrone Systems  is a specialist provider of HPC, unified storage, server and Big Data solutions. Tyrone is pitted as one shining stars on the Indian tech success story scene. Here, in a nutshell, is the story behind the mastermind of Tyrone Systems - Sanjay Lodha.

I was born in the small dusky town of Dhanbad in erstwhile Bihar, now Jharkhand, where I lived in an extended family along with my 5 brothers. I did my schooling in Dhanbad, from where I went to Pilani, Rajasthan for further studies and finally on to New Delhi, to do my Masters in economics and thereafter my MBA. 

I always had keen interest in economics and finance thanks to the evening sessions at my grandfather’s sit-out. Delhi University was renowned for its economics faculty, so I opted for economics. But deep down, I had always dreamt of becoming a businessman, very much like the successful industrialist my father was. Since I had my sights set on becoming an entrepreneur, and MBA and finance became the default choice coupled with my interest in the subject.

I spent my time away from studies, doing all kinds of odd jobs, mostly clerical work in my father’s office, including typing a drafted letter and much later even drafting simple ones. I was always eager and read all official correspondence.

I have never worked for anyone in my life, because I started out as an entrepreneur and have always remained one. Arguably, working for oneself has some disadvantages, but in retrospect, I have learnt a great deal from it.

I was still doing my MBA when we started this company. Back then, networking was a niche area and if you reflect on the company name it is derived from there. Eventually we started adding various IT solutions to our offerings. Considering our business model, we have always had a steady growth of 25 to 30 percent year on year. We definitely had few scattered years of minimal growth but have never had a negative one.

There have been several milestones in the company, only a few changed the course completely. The first was when we went from almost 100 percent channel-facing company to 100 percent end-user facing company. I also think that it changed the growth trajectory of the company too. We are a zero debt company today that has been able to survive and grow with our internal resources. In a few years’ time, we will be looking at a much higher rate of growth and then of course we will need to go public.

My initial learning was that though money is important, it is the ethics and commitment which makes the company. Another major learning was to learn how to sustain and steer the business for the long-term.

We started out as a distribution company and most of the large server and computer local OEMs in India were our customers. Gradually, we dabbled in a number of large government and corporate projects.

First few years were good and we kept on growing our business. Initially the problem was balancing work with full-time studies, because I was still doing my MBA back then. Since then we have grown exponentially, from 5 offices to 10 by the tenth year across India. Our first overseas office was opened in the fifteenth year of operations. Now, we have a dedicated manufacturing and integration unit in Parwanoo, Himachal.

Our biggest achievement is that till date 70 percent of our customers are referred by our customers. I can tell you about this one incident, where a prospective customer was comparing our solution and pricing with that of our competitor. We were off mark on the pricing, but bang on with the solution. During discussions we showed the customer the major flaws in the design of the competitor solution and casually remarked, “Sir, I have to give you a solution that works”. Pat came the customer’s reply: “I am confidence that you will fix the problem. Even if the solution is not compatible you will redesign and make it work better than the original.”

Our forays into newer and more niche solutions like HPC and Big Data have come due to our customers who in spite of knowing our relative inexperience in these areas pushed us to build solutions for them. My underlying principle is simple - to enjoy what I do. I want all my colleagues to do so too. We are what we are because of this simple principle.