Starting today, for the next 15 weeks YourStory will feature people who are the backbones of emerging companies. In our series called ‘Emerging Game Changers of India - Powered by Symantec’ we will feature such bright and talented individuals who are the support system of growing companies. They may not be the CXO or the founder, but these people are very important to the company and play an important role in making sure the CXO/founder is free to take care of external affairs, while they run a well-oiled machinery internally…
Today’s story is about Vipin KM, senior manager – internal systems department at Axcend Technologies. Axcend is a seven-year old company that helps automate business that have presence in industrial, manufacturing and utilities sector. Axcend provides business consulting, industrial automation(IA) and information technology(IT) assistance to give companies a competitive advantage in their businesses. Today Axcend handles a large number of clients including MNCs like ABB, Seimens and Honeywell.
Vipin joined Axcend right in the beginning and has been with the company for the last 8 years. He joined them as their nineteenth employee and today Axcend employs more than 200 people. Vipin started his career in a computer services firm in Chennai and joined Axcend as their desktop support engineer. In his career of eight years with Axcend his role has undergone several elevations and today he is completely responsible for all the internal IT requirements at Axcend. While he’s had many experiences over his tenure with the organization, the various changes that Axcend went through over the years have left the most impact on him. “My job here started as a desktop person, then I handled servers and since the last five years my role is more of decision making,” explains Vipin.
In his job as an IT professional, Vipin’s early challenge was to manage in the limited resources that Axcend had. “As a small company how much we invest in technology, the right amount and the right technology that will work for us was important,” says Vipin. Today however the money for technology upgradation is easier to come by. The continuous churn of people joining and leaving Axcend in the early days were also a challenge, but today even that challenge is behind them now.
One constant companion of Vipin and Axcend in all its years of existence is security software provider Symantec. “One major challenge we face in IT is the virus attacks that we have to deal with. But with Symantec we can close our eyes and trust them. Since we have started using Symantec we can now count the attacks that happen on our fingers and even that maybe because of the negligence of our people,” explains Vipin. Viruses and trojans eat up a major time of a desktop service provider, but with Symantec Endpoint protection installed and configured in Axcend controlling and managing devices and users connecting to the network is lot easier. “This saves us a lot of time. Our team could devote more of its time to other productive work without the fear of a data leakage or loss,” says Vipin.
Two main cornerstones for success of Axcend is their commitment to values as a company and the ‘trust’ factor that they have — internally with employees and externally with their clients. “The trust we develop with clients, the quality of our delivery, our commitment to deliveries, makes clients consider us valuable. Even in case of Symantec, the attribute of “trust” has been the reason for Axcend’s long-term partnership.
While the future appears promising, Vipin realizes there are miles to go for Axcend before it can sleep. There are internal as well as external challenges that their business continues to face. Today in the market the next best alternative to Axcend is TCS and vice versa. Axcend is the first company to receive dual certification of ISO and CMMi, which is a rarity in the space that they operate. While Axcend continues to grow from strength to strength, Vipin is confident they can take in the world because of the strong foundation that the company is based on — trust and commitment to values — two pillars that will help Axcend scale greater heights in years to come.
Emerging Game Changers of India is sponsored by Symantec. Please visit their site here
