When Ramesh Grover launched a printing solutions company about a quarter century back in 1976, few were willing to give him any chance of survival. But the man stuck to his dreams overcoming all obstacles and made the CMS Computers a Rs 381 crore company almost in three decades.

Today, it is one of the largest printing solutions companies in the country, rated amongst Top 10 solutions providers and is growing year-on-year despite a primarily domestic focus, with a projected growth target of about a 20% during the current year. A far cry from that day, when Grover along with two fellow professionals, S Ramadorai and VK Prasad, formed a company to provide maintenance support to all who were using IBM products. Even then, the list was enough to cause envy: BSES, PAL, Philips, Glaxo, ACC. And it continued to grow over the years, despite the economic slowdown during the last couple of years.

“While the bigger software companies are mostly concerned with offshoring, here is one viable business proposition that is intimately intertwined with our domestic lives.” Ramesh Grover, managing director, CMS

"Being the Technical Support Manager in IBM, I was assigned to take care of these machines," says Grover. So by 1976 when IBM decided to move out, the maintenance opportunity was thrown wide open and herein lies the genesis of CMS. One cannot just wish off CMS as another software company. Chances are that the credit card in your wallet might have been made by the company, or the telephone bill that comes to you was prepared through a CMS printing solution. Or if you are zipping through Delhi roads, the computerized traffic controller that makes you halt have come from the CMS stable. Even the crisp Rs 500 currency notes spewn by your neighborhood ATM might have been specifically earmarked by CMS technology. Examples can go on; but the point to drive home is that while the bigger software companies are mostly concerned with offshoring, here is one viable business proposition that is intimately intertwined with our domestic lives.

Story Before the Story
Like every visionary, Grover’s aura does not end with only a healthy bottomline for CMS. He seems to draw completely varying perceptions from different people. While some think that he is a maverick, others are not willing to grant him any accolade beyond a shrewd marketeer. Maybe, he is a combination of both. However, to understand the true spirit that drove him to form CMS, one needs to go back another 12 years. The year was 1966—hardly two decades since the country had gained Independence. India was still living the Nehruvian dream: Industrial nirvana through giant engineering concerns. Mechanical engineering was still the most sought after career option. Only mavericks (popularly regarded as eccentrics) opted for electronics, while computers existed only in sci-fi. IT was the acronym for income tax, while information technology was a phrase not even heard by lexicographers.

It was precisely then that a 20-year Grover graduated out of BITS, Pilani with a dream to join IBM, the only company of the future that existed in the country at that point of time. Parental pressure, however, forced him to initially join a more conventional L&T, though within a year it was impossible for him to further resist the beckoning of IBM. What followed was a decade long sojourn with IBM—the parting was in fact imposed upon by the George Fernandes-led Quit India campaign. By then the yesterday’s rookie maverick had matured enough and gained sufficient exposure to jump into his own venture. And besides, he had the wise counsel and pragmatism of his comrades-in-arms, Ramadorai and Prasad.

One day, when a business historian attempts to trace the evolution of Indian IT, he must have one chapter on how IBM in its first stay in the country, nurtured the mindset of one generation of IT professionals and how even its exit resulted in the birth of a number of excellent viable business organizations.

CMS is bound to get more than an honorable mention if such a dissertation is ever attempted upon.

Personality Imprint
However, if the three men third party maintenance company in 1976 was the infancy of CMS, its coming of age was the acquisition of Systime (the flagship software subsidiary of CMS today). Though as a director of CMS, Ramadorai too shares a lot of Grover’s passion. He becomes too verbose with his expressions but he however, makes him the prized possession of any quote-hungry scribe.

Sample this: Ramadorai was asked to explain the rationale behind the CMS slogan of universal solutions embracing the boundaries of possibilities. His retort, "What others do, we do better. What others can’t do, we do very well. What others won’t do we do it well, anyway. If a problem is complex and critical, CMS definitely has a solution to offer."

SI is the Key
Of late, CMS has started positioning itself more as a systems integrator, and less as a networking integrator. It also seems to have identified certain key areas where it would henceforth look as strategic growth opportunities.

Printing solutions seems to be the first catalyst to this systems integrator thrust and accordingly CMS has formed an alliance with Hyderabad-based Fortune Informatics that would provide it the output management solutions. It has also tied up with Oce, the continuous form printing technology provider.

V Ravi, who is driving the printing solutions business seems to be particularly upbeat about it. "Our end-to-end printing solutions offerings include vendor management, print design and layout, printing, stuffing and finally mailing. We are an expert on variable data printing and have therefore carved out the largest market share in the telecom billing, credit card and insurance sectors," he says.

The last few months have therefore witnessed CMS coming with three proof-of-concept centers for printing solutions in Delhi, Chennai and Navi Mumbai. Currently, CMS has been printing in excess of 12 million statements per month and it already has a clientele in excess of 60 including names like Reliance, Hutch, BSNL, MTNL, Chennai Telephones, Citibank, HSBC, ANZ, HDFC Bank, Amway, Tata AIG and Bajaj Allianz. The solutions have even crossed Indian shores—CMS is doing the printing for American Express in Sydney from its Gurgaon facility.

Storage solutions seems to be another chosen area of growth for CMS where its most recent alliance was announced with StorageTek. For other storage management solutions, CMS has tie-ups in place with various other players including Reel, Legato, Veritas, ArcServe and Seagate. Within storage, the CMS areas of focus are RAID implementation, virtual storage, SAN, document management, broadcast system, data warehousing and even "storage as a utility" solutions like pay per use. The top-notch amongst storage clients include VSNL, Morgan Stanley, Philips, Bajaj Tempo, ANZ, Pragati Printers, NSE, Airtel and Cisco.

While printing and storage are more recent babies with a tremendous potential for the future, Grover’s passion rests with the smart card-based solutions where CMS has been a pioneer in the country. He feels plastic money in India is synonymous with CMS.

"Ninety nine percent of credit/debit cards in India are produced on systems provided by CMS Card technology and outsourcing services," says Grover.

Being a master distributor of the DataCard Group in India, CMS provides outsourcing facility for personalization plastic card with Magstripe encoding, embossing, photo, text, barcode, biometric, signature printing & smart card on DataCard Systems.

Besides strategic alliances, acquisitions have also played a key role in the area of ERP/business intelligence and security. The Systime acquisition gave CMS the foothold in the ERP/BI space and today its Systime subsidiary is the preferred business partner of JD Edwards and Cognos in India. CMS provides security solutions through its another subsidiary DITL, the leader in access control and CCTV systems technology solutions. It is the only company in India to implement face recognition based access control system, virtually the latest in biometrics.

Ask them how they foresee the future of CMS? While Ramadorai has a more straightforward answer of 17-20% growth, Grover cleverly dodges giving any figures.

Rajneesh De in Mumbai

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