It is rarely seen that a technocrat could emerge as a good entrepreneur
Vijay Kumar Gupta of Kwality Photonics Private Limited
Hyderabad: It is rarely seen that a technocrat could emerge as a good entrepreneur. Though we can recall such people in pharma like Dr Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy’s, Ram Prasad Reddy of Aurobindo or Dr Murali of Divis, technocrats, who turned entrepreneurs and also made big, appear to be few. Vijay Kumar Gupta of Kwality Photonics Private Limited is one such person who became successful in the field of electronics.
“I had a passion for electronics from my early school days. However, it was only at Indian Institute of Science, where I was doing my engineering that I started working on LEDs as part of my BE project — which later went on to become my core business activity,” Mr Gupta told this newspaper.
Later, for three summers, he refined his expertise in LED packaging at Tata R&D centre in Mumbai, BARC Laser Division and TIFR Semiconductor. After graduating from IISc, Tapan Bhattacharya, his mentor at BARC, invited him to join the team that he was putting together at Central Electronics Limited, Delhi, which was aligned with a project of ministry of science & technology to bring LEDs to India. It is here that Mr Gupta gained hands-on experience in manufacturing LEDs right from the chip level.
In the 80s much before the internet age, when a turnaround time for one purchase order sent to Japan was 30 days and the market was prone to logistic barriers, he used a scientific approach in his work that helped in creating a benchmark in LEDs.
“At Kwality, we focused on high end LEDs. We established our name as a professional grade LED makers and the demand grew consistently. Kwality was the first Indian company to manufacture LED. It was profitable right from first year, because we made prudent investment into capital expenditure, especially in machinery,” he said.
This was the time it opted for automatic Die-bonders to meet productivity demands. In 1987 the government policy conditions were relaxed and this enabled the launch of LED production business in Kwality group. Mr Gupta quickly set up two new businesses to build his dream of making LEDs namely Kwality Electronic Industries in 1987 and Kwality Photonics in 1993 with a small investment of Rs 3.5 lakh.
Today, Kwality is approached by organisations like ISRO and the IITs for special requirements; it has overcome the gender bender where the majority of employees are women. “I believe in hands-off management and delegate work wherever possible. I let my people in my organisation know what is expected of them and refrain from directing execution. This makes them to think and sort issues independently, thereby bringing out hidden talents. Since most of our raw materials are sourced from abroad and our needs evolve certainly in terms of technology, price and volumes, I handle the pre-purchase as well. Strategy, product R&D and technology forecasting occupies most of my time”, sums up Mr. Gupta. Presently, Kwality is spread over five premises in Hyderabad, the main one is at the Electronic Complex at Kushaiguda.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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