had almost retired from active work. Although he still was a director who presided over boards of three companies including the executive panel of TechBooks, he thought his 'vacation time' would be as exciting as his executive life. After playing soccer, cricket and squash at university level, Singh started learning golf to invest his time, which he had it in loads after his retirement. "But sitting at home and learning to play golf got really boring. I guess I just cannot sit back and take it easy," Singh admits. He realised that retirement was not his cup of tea and the itch to get back to work grew stronger.
The opportunity came when Singh (as a TechBooks board member) saw potential for the company to expand its services into publishers but also offer the same to other market verticals. "I came into TechBooks when the company was having performance problems and the growth rate had slowed down," says the CEO of TechBooks.
According to him, some of the best lessons were learnt while entering new markets. "We initially tried to do with minimum resources but the lesson learnt was to dedicate your best resources to the new markets. The other lesson is to keep building your management team with grade one players."
It's been a long time since Singh left India at the age of five to finish his schooling in England and later moved to University of Bath to complete his M.Sc in Computer Communications. Today, Singh surmises his journey in few words: "I have no regrets. I have had a very successful career, including the time I have spent building and growing TechBooks."
Singh is married and has two daughters, whom he adores. "Whenever I traveled, and my daughters had any problems related to their school work, I made sure that I helped them," he says. How? "They mailed/faxed the queries and I replied back to them," Singh answers.
Today, both are studying abroad and well settled in their respective careers. He does realise that the time spent traveling, signing deals was more than spent with family vacationing, "But that's the payment you have to make to a job, which is demanding and requires one to be on the move 24x7." But this does not deter him from being a proud daddy.
Always busy with adding skills and people to his company, Singh acknowledges that "there's a lot to be done for TechBooks," and promises that his best is yet to come. "I have come back with TechBooks, and will make sure that the company reaches its deserved space and that's at the top." Wait and watch, is it?
