July 08, 2009 - Rediff News

Soon after P V Kannan started 24/7 Customer, a business process outsourcing company that provides integrated customer lifecycle management services, he faced the biggest challenge of his life. In the aftermath of 9/11, the core team that he took almost 14 months to build started developing cold feet.

Nevertheless, "the child did eventually learn to walk after tumbling and falling for a while".

Today, 24/7 Customer clocks a triple-digit revenue (Kannan refused to divulge the exact figure) and has Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital he is is well-known for his investments in Yahoo!, Google as an investor and board member.

Kannan in an interview with Prasanna D Zore discussed the challenges that 24/7 Customer faced as a start up, his career, his vision of the BPO industry, his success mantras and advice to young entrepreneurs.

Your first job

I started working with Tata Consultancy Services, TCS. It was quite unconventional for someone who did his CA in 1988 to join a software company. One of my seniors who did his CA joined TCS and just raved about the company. I went there for an informal interview on a Saturday to meet the resident manager there and at the end of our discussion he asked me if I would be interested in joining TCS. That's how TCS hired me.

Were you always interested in working for a software company?

Obviously if you do your chartered accountancy you don't aim to become a software programmer. After I finished my intermediate in CA the institute had some introductory programming class. The personal computer came about only in the early 80s. In that wonderful era I spotted a computer and picked up a book on basics of programming language from our library.

I found it an interesting read and joined this course and started programming. It intrigued me at that time and I was not convinced if I could make a career in programming and computers.

But what changed my mind was walking into TCS, talking to all the people there and getting exposed to the industry. People today think that the software industry came out of nowhere and went on to become an overnight success. Any industry takes 20 years of hard work to become an overnight success.

In those days I remember going to my parents and telling them that I have got an offer from TCS and offers from a couple of MNCs but I have decided to take the TCS offer they were very skeptical. They wouldn't believe that TCS belonged to the Tata Group.

Having done my CA I had no inclination to join a software company.