Good Entrepreneurs are self sufficient, independent and know how to sell.”
He has run the entire gamut – from working in the world of mega corporations to being an entrepreneur who helped jump start many young companies becoming a success story at a relatively young age. In an exclusive interview, Nandan Sheth President of ATM Direct and the Indus Entrepreneurs Atlanta Chapter talks about his journey and why in spite of the exciting perks the corporate world offers, he prefers being the master of his own destiny.
So what were the growing years like-the major influences that have shaped the way you look at life and work?
My father was an immigrant from Uganda and we made U.K our home in the early 1980s. It was not very easy then because the local people didn’t understand the South Asian community and saw them as leeches on the economy. It was ironic because when my father moved to the U.K, he started his own business and on day one, he hired 2-3 people eventually hiring 35-40 more. So he was actually investing in the country and the economy. I don’t think the prejudice was inherent or inborn, it was just a lack of realization that the South Asian culture stood for hard work, doing the best for your family, giving your kids a good education and being productive citizens of the community.
However from my father, I got a very pragmatic perspective on life. He taught me to think positively in diverse and adverse environments, to be realistic and hold my head high. We had moved into a middle class, predominantly Catholic and Irish neighborhood, which was very religious as well. It would have been very easy for me to gravitate towards other Indian kids because they were facing the same issues of assimilation as I was,but my father told me to try and integrate and make friends with non Indians.
He decided to invite five families from the neighborhood whose kids went to my school for an Indian dinner. The families were a bit taken aback-why is this guy calling us home? But eventually four out of those five families came over. When the parents started talking they realized the similarities between their culture and ours. When you look at it, you realize that Catholic values are very similar to Indian values-strong family ties being at the top of the list. Then it became easy to break the ice at school. Whenever I would talk to some one new, I would casually mention, “You know Jack? He was at my house with his family the other day. Believe it or not the friends I made when I was 7 are still close friends today.
Dad also taught me to stand up and speak my mind and not be afraid. I think that is a very important lesson for anyone.
Things have of course changed tremendously in the U.K now and I see such respect for the South Asian community and their contribution. Now when I look back I realize that if you are proud of who you are and where you came from, have self confidence, have academic acumen and social skills and are willing to work hard, you will be respected and welcomed in any cultural set up, and in any part of the world.
The second major influence in my life was my cricket coach in college. He was a South African and he noticed that I was very impatient and impulsive-something I still struggle with. He taught me to stand back, observe, analyze and then act and that is something that holds true in every area of life. It was not just enough to go out and hit those 30-40 runs in a couple of overs in a cricket match. He told me to pace myself and get my averages up. My family taught me to be gracious when I won and remain humble when I lost learning from the mistakes I made. That lesson again transports very well into business or any other area in life.
So were you expected to become a doctor or an engineer like all kids of South Asian families are expected to be?
Interestingly I came from a family that was very different from the ones around us. They migrated from Karachi Pakistan after partition and my grandfather and his brothers were all very actively involved in the Gandhi movement and everyone was into music in a big way. We traveled a lot and there was a lot of diverse activity in the family so I grew up in a pretty liberal environment. My dad was friends with Sarangi maestro Sultan Khan, two of my aunts reached a pretty high level in classical music. So I grew up with music and was very much into sports. At one point of time I wanted to become a music producer, but of course dad wasn’t too comfortable with that and it was obvious that for him music and sports should remain hobbies.
It was around 18 or 19, I became serious about what I wanted to do professionally. From a very early age I had been very interested in finance, how money is made and I loved economic theory and that really carved my career.
So you have dabbled in everything-from working for companies like Goldman Sachs, Deloitte & Touche, AT&T Solutions, to name a few and also been an entrepreneur with a pretty impressive track record. What are the things that stand out in your mind when you look back at your journey?
I have never believed that you can only work either for big companies or just be an entrepreneur, because there are so many key values and skills that are transferable. Of course the challenges are unique with each.
It was interesting that when I started my career, like any studious South Asian boy, I thought it was all about what I did, how well I worked at proving myself and my success depended only on the caliber of my work. I didn’t focus that much on building relationships. I didn’t go to social events I was invited to and I didn’t make any effort to get to know the partners in the company.
Indians are so close knit as a community, we have our own great support system, our uncles and aunties that you don’t think you need anybody outside of it. Your car’s messed up-call uncle and he will say-oh go to that mechanic, I have been using him for 15 years, so you don’t even step out of your comfort zone to find one on your own!
So all I did in the first year was to just work really hard and thought I was on a huge high-after all my excellent work spoke for it.
Then my boss took me aside and said-You are intelligent, there is no question about your ability to work hard, and your integrity but to get to the next level you really need to learn how to sell, how to build confidence in a business world and how to network. In fact if I was even half as good in giving feedback as my boss was I would be a much better manager.
It sounds really mundane but if you really look at any aspect of life-its all about selling. If you are not selling a product, you are selling an idea. If you are not selling an idea you are selling yourself to different people-why they should get on your team, why they should be in a relationship with you. I was told by my boss – “You have got to have that ability to influence people, and you don’t have that right now.” That really hit me hard because here I was thinking I was hot property, doing really well and instead I was told I lacked the key skill needed to do well in all areas of life.
I think in big companies its not only important to learn how to build relationships and network to be able to stand out, but also to work in a politically charged environment that is both external and internal.
Start ups on the other hand, teach you how to be self sufficient, to operate in an environment where you don’t have the huge support system available in big companies. It teaches you how to get things done and deal with rejection, to learn to influence high caliber men and women to be on your team and to be able to sell your vision. What separates successful entrepreneurs from the mediocre ones is the ability to be self sufficient, independent and have the capability to engage the right type of individuals.
Another key thing is to surround yourself with strong people with alternative views and perspective who can tell you when you are wrong and why and can stick to their guns and not let you shove things under the carpet. Its human nature to surround yourself with people you can control and I have seen that often enough behind the scenes in a lot of cases.
If you are unable to validate your major decisions you are not getting the richest database that you need to be able to do the right thing.
Lets now come to ATM direct. You are really excited about this and it seems a great space to be. Where did Pay by Touch go wrong?
Its hard to say what were their motivations but it seemed to me that Pay by Touch built a company around acquiring patents. They were trying to become a patent litigation company and they never focused on creating a business around some of their patents that they had purchased. Their big idea was always biometric payments.
They bought ATM Direct for over 30 million but it was just humming away in the corner because they were not seeing it as a business but as patents they could reside over and litigate other firms that breached them.
I also felt that the leadership that Pay by Touch put in place was very much a friend and family type of operation even though they invested so much in terms of finance. These were individuals who knew nothing about the industry. They were great technocrats and built great technology but the team they had accumulated wasn’t equipped for mainstream commercialization of that great asset. In fact if I sell the hardware that we acquired we will make a lot of money- that is how much stuff they had accumulated.
We are very excited about the an innovation that will be gain changing for a large industry, and of course I’m excited personally that this will give me another opportunity to prove that I’m not a one trick two trick pony!
If all goes well from this year PIN debit on the Internet will become an exciting commercial reality. However what makes you think people will take to a debit pin system where the fear of being wiped out in a minute online will be a major fear factor for many who prefer to use credit cards because they offer some protection. Internet security is always a big issue and there is very little out there that is hacker safe.
That’s a great question. I haven’t even been asked this by many of the industry analysts who have interviewed me.
The way we will be engaging online with our customers is very unique. We have not only the highest and most reliable encryption available in the market place, we have also added another layer of encryption that we have built ourselves. And at no time are we capturing the consumer’s pin number.
For example when you use your debit card these days, you punch in your 4 digit code. The system actually picks up the numbers, encrypts them and sends it in an encrypted fashion. In our system we are not doing that. We’ve got a scrambling pin pad, so any kind of key logger that’s on the system trying to get your information, doesn’t know what you clicked at point A which may be say the number 6 that you just punched in. We are picking up coordinates that you are hitting when you are punching in the pin. So at no point are we picking and transmitting the actual pin and relaying it to our system.
Even if there is a system breach, there are three things required to get to your bank account-the account number and the mag stripe data. We are only collecting the first of the three pieces.
Another thing that comes to mind is how challenging is it going to be, to do business over global cyber space?
I think its going to be more of a cultural challenge than a technical one, with the internet being so ubiquitous. We are going to be very selective about the merchants we are going to partner with focusing on the top 100 international retailers and top 50 airlines, putting the system into place, understanding and having the right level of customer service. I’m sure we will learn a lot from them and once we feel confident that we have the knowledge and competence will we venture into the middle market.
Of course venturing into other countries will bring challenges too, when that happens. China and India are of great significance for us for obvious reasons, and the question will be -how will we maintain the integrity of our IP and our patent? I’ve got the global patent but what is stopping China or someone else to develop something similar to what we offer and start selling it. How we handle IP breaches globally will be a key issue when we plan our global strategy.
How quickly do you think the credit card holders will warm up to the idea?
There is always a group that adopts a new innovation faster than others and in no way do I think we are going to replace all the credit card transactions that are occurring online. There is always a natural cycle of adoption.
However, there are 380 million card holders and out of them 100 million are card holders with debit only feature on their cards so there is already a huge ready market there. The retailers we have talked to are really excited about this because this will help them save the 3-5 percent transaction fees they pay each time they run a credit card or a debit card as a credit card which is how it works now.
You are currently also the President of the Atlanta Chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs, the highly respected global, not-for-profit network of entrepreneurs and professionals that provides mentoring, networking and nurtures entrepreneurs & professionals. What attracted you to it and not some other South Asian organization in spite of such a crazy work load?
When I first moved to Atlanta, I knew no one. I would get emails from TiE and a little under 2 years of receiving those emails I decided to go attend one of the events where a speaker that I was interested in was speaking that evening. The first thing I discovered was the warmth with which the mentors welcomed me and how willing they were to share their success with others. They really wanted to give back and within the South Asian framework, there are very few organizations that can boast of such commitment on part of business leaders. It was a place where young guys like me could have access to men who were the stalwarts in their industry or area of work.
In between I dropped out but my friend Vir Nanda who is one of the community leaders and mentors for TiE encouraged me to return. Then as was typical, I started giving opinions on what I liked and didn’t and before I knew it Chand Akineni, told me I needed to get more involved and bring the changes I was suggesting. He insisted that members would love to hear young success stories, and they also needed some fresh young blood in the organization.
I later became a mentor and Charter member and today I think I can say with great conviction that TiE is an organization that is truly the place to be if you want to learn how to be self sufficient, network, exchange ideas and do business together. Its also where you will learn from the best.
In the past couple of years that I have been involved with TiE we have continued to raise the quality of the speakers, we have tried to get more mentors involved, and so many people have been positively influenced by being a part of it.
TiE is a phenomenally high value, low cost resource and I see no reason for any professional who is interested in innovation, entrepreneurship and wants to learn how to manage his or her business not to come and avail what we offer.
What do you do when you are not squashing 48 hours in a 24 hour day?
I think my two young sons have given me a whole new perspective on life. They have grounded me and today I look for nourishment not just for the intellect but also for the spirit. I still play soccer and am picking up golf now. We love to try new cuisine and Atlanta is a great place to try out new stuff.