Pay-off time - Sanjeev Aggarwal

NEWSMAKER

SANJEEV AGGARWAL,
CEO, Daksh

Four months ago Sanjeev Aggarwal, CEO, Daksh, seemed ebulliently confident about the future. His company had overshot all its growth targets and it was racing ahead into the future.

It had doubled its size by hiring over 3,000 people in about 14 months. And by 2005, he figured it would hit the magic figure of 10,000 agents handling customer inquiries from around the world.

Certainly, Aggarwal seemed like a man with few worries. An IPO? It wasn't urgent, he said. The company had plenty of cash and the top managers were so focused on growth that they had little time for anything else. Would he sell the company? Certainly not.

Why did the picture alter so suddenly in a short space of time? Well, IBM is a powerful suitor and tough to turn down. And it has, apparently, put $160 million down on the table.

Also, in February IBM signed a multi-billion dollar customer-service agreement with Sprint that's scheduled to last five years. Sprint is one of Daksh's top customers. As a result of the deal, Daksh could have faced tougher competition for the Sprint business. IBM has also struck a deal with Aetna, another Daksh customer.

How much will life change for Aggarwal now that Daksh has become an IBM subsidiary? That remains to be seen. But he "" and Daksh's other top managers "" will be staying on in their jobs.

Also, Daksh will continue to do business under its own brand name. That has been made clear in a long letter to employees that was released immediately after the deal was finalised. It also looks as if Daksh will grow even faster than originally estimated, now that it has IBM behind it.

There will be one crucial difference. Aggarwal will now have several millions in the bank as a result of the deal. He will split the money with the company's three other founders: Pawan Vaish, Venkat Tedanki and MJ Aravind. Three venture capital companies General Atlantic Partners, Citibank Private Equity and Actis will also leave the table after making rich returns.

That's not bad going for a low-key, 43-year-old executive who started his career in DCM in the early 1980s (others who graduated from the DCM training ground include HCL founder Shiv Nadar).

From DCM he moved into the hi-tech field, working first with Digital/Compaq and then becoming chief executive of 3Com. He also did a short stint with Motorola before leaving to start Daksh.

What inspired Aggarwal to turn entrepreneur? He insists it was a combination of factors. First, he and his partners could see what GE was doing right at their backdoor in Gurgaon.

Also, they figured, mistakenly as it turned out, that the new, emerging Internet-based companies would need firms like Daksh to stay in touch with their customers. A few months after launching Daksh they switched their attention to traditional Fortune 500 companies.

It hasn't been an easy haul. Aggarwal made scores of sales calls before landing a small California-based company called BigStep. But in June 2000 Daksh landed the big fish "" Amazon. It may have helped that Ashish Gupta, formerly of Junglee.com and later Amazon, was closely associated with Daksh.

But there was certainly no looking back after that. Aggarwal always admitted that in another era he might not have gone into business. He was encouraged to do so because there were venture capitalists waiting with wads of cash.

As he told Business Standard more than a year ago: "We thought, if it doesn't work out, we can give it two, three years, burn somebody else's money. Then we can say that we tried, but what the heck."

As it has turned out, both Aggarwal and the venture capitalists have raked in the cash in a much shorter time than they may have expected. Daksh will now move into a different league. One chapter comes to a close and a new one is just beginning.