Face to Face: 2nd generation Industrialist in Pharma Equipment Manufacturing

With popular demand, I continue this series of interviews with leading enterprise owners. Of course, it is more demanding than just writing at leisure on Sundays. Traveling and meeting busy entrepreneurs without any distraction is surely what I enjoy. Documenting that candid interaction is even more satisfying.

This time, I met a young 2nd generation Pharma Equipment Manufacturing Industrialist from Bengaluru. They compete at global standards, supply to Fortune 500 companies, own IPR and patents and are known for their contribution to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry by their innovative designs and compliance to strictest know Pharma Industry manufacturing standards. This gentleman in his late 30s understands the technology and agreed to reflect with me. I was hosted at an amazing place overlooking the famous race course in Bangalore at 4:00 pm on Sunday. It was my first time watching the race and betting. And I had a memorable 45 minutes reflection on why his enterprise depends on BLACKbox as a mission critical device and what value it has contributed to his enterprise.

I thank him for allowing me to share this conversation without disclosing his family name, which is a brand in Pharma Equipment Industry. In the interest of time, I am summarizing the conversation.

Question:

What has triggered adoption of BLACKbox in your company? You have access to world class talent and can afford any level of investment?

Answer:

I employ world class talent which comes at an extraordinary cost. They create intellectual assets like original designs, drawings, concepts, and research reports. When I joined my family business, we were transforming from old times when these intellectual assets were in physical form and we used to preserve ammonia prints, hand sketches, and paper notes. With my involvement in operations, I had tough time convincing my Board to go digital. As I was advocating to transform our intellectual assets from tangible to intangible, my board always advised me to go digital only after providing for all safeguards of digital assets against loss and theft. With time, we procured state of the art engineering design software licenses, SAP and implemented DMS to go paperless. I was always asked this question in every board meeting, which made me feel nervous. It was about, what if this data is lost or stolen? I worried what if my digital assets are deleted or are left unusable by ransom-ware or are destroyed due to loss of hardware to a disaster. Not only that but also, I started realizing that it is far easier to leak or steal data in its digital form than in its physical form through USB, Email Attachment, BCC and Internet Uploads.

Until I came across BLACKbox, I was always advised to procure certain IT components which can store my digital assets. I invested in File Server of very high quality and spent huge money on Microsoft Licensing. One fine day, we lost very critical drawings which could never be recovered. We defaulted on deadline and rework cost was significant. I almost lost face before my Board of Directors. I was given the reason that though I purchased a file server, user saved data on his desktop only. That desktop crashed and we lost data despite investment in file server which was never used by the user.

I was so baffled at the user and called him to give explanation on such negligence. I was stunned and speechless when I heard the explanation. User explained that our files are very large and our file server was not good enough to facilitate data storage on network in real-time manner. He could not concentrate on his work as every time he hit save, he had to wait and many a times his files got corrupt while being saved on network. He had a point. I was so disappointed with fact that after spending a lot of money, I was still dependent on user’s discretion to use the device and due to certain genuine limitations, users were not using the hardware.

During those days of agony and sense of insecurity about loosing data again, I read your LinkedIn article and checked your website. It almost answered all my concerns. I spent good time on Synersoft’s YouTube channel and came across many other possibilities which I never imagined and it could impact my business continuity and competitiveness. That’s how I explored BLACKbox.

Question: I know I met you and explained BLACKbox for the first time. Please help me understand your first impression.

When you met me, I was impressed with your explanations and logic of irrelevance of traditional solutions in times of modern challenge. Your assurance about forced centralization of large files over network through BLACKbox’s SSD caching and link aggregation. I was waiting for this question. To give you a feedback on my first impression, let me tell you honestly, you scared me a lot. Every slide you showed me conveyed scary possibilities. You scared me about device failure and sold your Breathe on Breathe Twin Device technology. You scared me of ransomware and sold me your idea of Vault and Workspace. You scared me of design theft from laptops over internet and sold me your BLACKbox duo for laptop security. I could never scare you in return.

Question:

Oh, you got the secret of my sales formula, haha, how was the implementation? I hope it was no more scary…

Answer:

It was scary, not for me, but surely for your team, Winking, It gave me sense of retaliation when I put your team to explain the product and implementation plan to my father and uncle. It was surely scary for your team. They asked all laymen questions your team could never expect. Let me tell you, your team was good enough to face that. They patiently explained every concept, showed all the videos and explained implementation plan. Honestly, they found your method of User Profiling very useful. Before implementation started, every user’s profile was prepared with clear mention on which folder they will access, their entitlement on USB drive, email policies, internet policies, BCC. Frankly speaking, it helped us being more organized. Training was done well, but you know, we just connect your support call center whenever we want anything to be done or shoot the trouble. We are reasonably happy and able to focus on our own business.

Question:

That’s interesting. How confident are you now largely about your digital assets with a view to possibility of leakage or theft?

Answer:

Honestly, I did not tell you. In last 2 years since BLACKbox is implemented, we have caught at least 7 people in attempt to leak or steal our intellectual property. They have failed, and we have prosecuted them. It has set an example to all our 250 computer users. It feels very confident.

Question:

That’s so encouraging to learn. Thank you for this amazing ambiance and exotic green tea. I am going to share this with my readers. What message would you like to give to them?

Answer:

For all entrepreneurs who are categorized as an SME, I have a loud and clear message to convey. We have to understand our compulsions and limitations. Compulsion of adopting IT, go digital and depend on data. Limitation of our inability to recruit and retain IT talent, because IT talent does not aspire to work with us. We have to settle down to under-qualified talent or a small time vendor to preserve our data from loss and protect our data from leakage and theft. Traditional solutions are too complex and expensive for us and our IT resources. Even if we spend on them, we might not get them fully implemented. BLACKbox is a real innovation which solved our problem. It is single, integrated and fit to purpose system which comes at one third of the cost and it fully serves the purpose of prevention of data loss, leakage and theft, with our without a dedicated IT resource.

Signing off now, next time, I am meeting a management consulting firm and will have such interesting interaction.

Best Regards,

Vishal Shah
Founder and CEO,
Synersoft Technologies Pvt Ltd