Up to code: Softserv Solutions is changing the game for Indian IT subcontractors
A whole lot of chutzpah, leaps of faith, and a dash of putting yourself out there.
You wouldn’t know from Manoj Pipersania’s demeanour that he’s painfully shy. Over a virtual call from Jaipur, the 46-year-old Founder and CEO of Softserv Solutions talks animatedly about everything from being visible for the sake of his employees (more on that later) to his penchant for shooting and getting a pilot’s licence.
Softserv Solutions is more than a template IT firm specialising in business automation. Established as a private limited company in 2012, the company also offers tailored barcode solutions for use cases such as warehousing, clinical research, and RFID tagging for jewellery and other products. Its 20,000 sq ft headquarters in Jaipur belies the fact that Softserv is a micro enterprise employing just over 60 people. As Pipersania puts it, “We are the richest company in the world.” And scale has little to do with it.
Pipersania started out in the early aughts as a CCNA (short for Cisco Certified Network Associate) IT specialist who configured ATMs for state-run Bank of Baroda before moving to Nepal to automate financial processes for a cooperative bank in the country. Running on just three hours of sleep a night, he’d write programmes and shop them to local businesses that needed to automate their processes. Thereon, he hopscotched from one job to another across countries — in India for Electronic Data Systems, now an HP subsidiary, then the US’ largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group.
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“I managed hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid and Medicare projects. But I wasn’t happy. When you’re aligned with one function, you end up doing the same thing for years. Which is why I didn’t move to an IBM