We started by meeting with Pravin’s better half, who also works with him. She did her schooling from Jnyan Prabhodini. Then went on to do her law and also her MBA. She looks after legal complainces and HR at the company. With 250 people in the team, I asked her what her biggest challenge was. Prescient has figured out that hiring from non metro Govt engineering colleges works best for them. The additional criteria used by the company is 90 percent in 10th and 12th. The challenge with them is working on English. Instead of breaking heads on teaching them English, new employees are asked to join English courses on their own – and come to speed. Most of them are able to do that in a matter of 6 months. Dealing with the Government, however continues to remain a challenge for her! Deepti has been doing a lot of work with schools. She has offered that our teachers can attend the teacher training program at Jnana Prabodhini. The family shifted to Bavdhan from Pradhikaran a year ago, which also happens to have a Jnana Prabodhini school. Their son Apoorv did his schooling from there. We met him also. He is doing an internship with Prescient Technologies – working on automated vehicles. Apoorv is studying at MIT – E/C. Is planning to appear for his GRE. Has just got into TE. Have invited him over to Bulls Eye for a diagnostic test.
The story of Pravin’s passion starts with his first job at Bajaj auto. Rajesh and Pravin were both employed in the Research and development team at Bajaj. To be more precise they were both underemployed there. One day, the team of GTEs at R & D decided to go and meet the R and D head, Gupta Ji. They proposed that they could develop a scooter from scratch. Gupta Ji appreciated their enthusiasm and politely informed them that the task involved a lot of complexity. The company could not trust fresh GTEs to do this job. However their enthusiasm and passion was appreciated. And I believe Prescient is where it is today, thanks to this continuing passion. Pravin had appeared for GATE, but family financial circumstances were tight, so he decided not to do his M.Tech. Pravin’s Audi Q3 would make one wonder what these circumstances could have been. Reality is that his parents started their careers as workers in a brick kiln. And they continued there till his dad got a break at the PWD workshop in Dapodi.
After a year of working with Bajaj R and D, Pravin realised that in the field of design a PG is a must. So he reappeared for GATE, got the same score – and joined IIT Bombay for their M.Tech program. The first assignment given to him by his professor at IIT was to do a seminar. The only thing that was given by the Prof was the topic. The rest of the stuff he had to do himself. It involved extensive library work. Every time he came up with an interesting paper – the professor would ask him to read up another one from that paper’s reference appendix. This exercise gave Pravin a lot of confidence about being able to do things on his own.
His entrepreneurial ambitions started taking shape as a result of this. After unsuccessfully badgering our COEP batchmates into taking the entrepreneurial plunge with him, he ended up with a job at Tata Motors. Tata was then developing a 3d design software. The project went on for a couple of years, but finally ended up in the scrap bin. Time for Pravin to move on. Next stop was Geometric, where again he got involved in similar stuff, for one of Geometric’s clients – IDEAS. Later of IDEAS was purchased by Siemens – who then decided to set up shop in Pune. Pravin was deputed by Geometric to the Siemens team for that. Later on most of the Geometric team got absorbed by Siemens – except for Pravin, who Geometric was loathe to let go. This turned out to be an opportunity in disguise. He left Geometric soon after this – and approached Siemens – this time as an entrepreneur. Siemens was more than happy to work with him. It continues till date to be Prescient’s largest customer.
Entrepreneurship got back the IIT Bombay connect. One of Pravin’s chums – who was doing his PhD there – joined Pravin as a partner. This was circa 2000. The partnership lasted 6 years. There were some health issues that the partner was facing – because of which Pravin had to buy him out. Fortunately he has managed to nurture and retain a good team. His CTO, also a director in his firm, is a 1992 COEP pass out.
One of the first experiences that Pravin got as an entrepreneur was a project that he did for a Korean professor. This was related to 3D measurement. Pravin slogged day and night for 7 months on this project. The total revenue that they got from this project was a measly $ 5000. When they presented their work to the client, it exceeded expectations. The client made them sign an agreement, whereby they were not to convert this algorithm into a product. The reason for this was that the professor was an investor in one of his PhD student’s company. This company had worked much longer and had come up with an algorithm which was not as good. Cut to 10 years later, this company got sold for 125 million dollars. The advantage that it had over Prescient was that it was just across the road from Daewoo and Hyundai headquarters. These clients were looking for such a solution, and more importantly were ready to encourage local talent to help them develop the solution. In contrast, Tata Motors, a company where Pravin had actually worked, refused to believe that Indian companies could come up with world class solutions. TML culture is to believe in what Boeing and Ford are buying. The rest is useless.
Pravin works in a very interesting area at the intersection of math and tech. One of his clients, Quebec based PolyWorks, works in the area of measurement. In earlier days finished parts were checked using vernier callipers and micrometers. Today Polyworks’ laser scans do the checking. What is done is that the scan layers are converted into a set of data points. Curve fitting is then done of these points – and deviations from the specifications are then recorded. For a specific application, Eaton wanted to automate the repair of inlet and exhaust manifolds of jet engines. Dents can form during operation, which affect the efficiency and performance of the engine. These manifolds are not always easy to inspect visually. Polymath scanners were being used to get the manifold actual curve data. Most measurement data has a fairly high noise to signal ratio. Prescient had to use this data to identify the dents. Geometry was not giving the answers – so they turned to statistics!
Incidentally Polyworks is represented in India by a Prescient-Polyworks 50:50 JV. Pravin is getting good experience in field sales in India as a result. He finds that quite challenging compared to dealing with clients in Europe, US and Australia.
One of the skills that Prescient has developed is image processing. One way of differentiating Prescient from other engineering solutions companies is to work on projects where processing data related to images is important. Case in point is the project that they are doing for a multinational client, a 4 billion dollar chemicals company. Because of cost pressures, a lot of gates in factories are nowadays unmanned. Decision has to be made about authorised entry. For safety, the company wants to ensure that material laden trucks go to the right storage areas. Pravin is providing a tracking solution. The debate was between using GPS versus using cameras. Was finally settled in favour of cameras, as it required no additional hardware to be fitted to a truck. This system will talk to the company ERP system and update real-time delivery status in the factory to this system.
Most products require customisation before customers can end up actually using it. There are very few products which can directly be bought off the shelf and can be plugged and played. Most products will have service components. More than a decade ago, Prescient had tried out getting into the product space. A lot of time was invested in developing an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. This system had a visual programming tool that helped fast customisation. Yet, the challenge was that each of the twenty customers seemed to have a different set of problems that they wanted their ERP to solve. Prescient could not standardise requirements. Again, what did not help was that all customers were Indians, who did not believe in the competence of an Indian supplier. Pravin tried to make the ERP visual programming tool into a product, but even that failed. The programming product did not have the right plugins to existing legacy softwares. It was an excellent solution for a company that was going to build software from scratch, but legacy was another story. I questioned Pravin about why he did not sell it to startups, who don’t have to worry about legacies. His answer was that today this product has become dated. Technology has changed. And similar products are available in the market.
My suggestion to Pravin was to co create an inspection product with Accurate engineering. But to ensure that Accurate is made the exclusive partner, but only for Indian sales. And look for similar partnerships in the developed world. For example there would be about 40-50 aircraft engine maintenance players globally. These could be the first target for this inspection product. Differentiation will be better, if hardware and software are sold together as a package.
One thing that India will always be good is to be a great talent provider. Prescient has fine-tuned its hiring strategy. They look at people who have scored more than 90% in 10th and 12th. But they will never hire from metros or big towns. The hiring will be always from government colleges in small cities. This leads to better overall retention. This leads to some problems with skills, especially in communication. However, within the company there is a great team of in-house senior directors, who take care in filling up this skill gap.
The word discipline comes from the root word disciple. A lot of discipline has happened in Pravin’’s life after finding his spiritual guru. In his early days, Pravin used to be under a lot of stress. As he would always wonder where the money would come for to make salary. This changed when his outlook to life changed. Earlier he would think of happiness as a goal. Now he thinks of it as a process. Prescient is doing quite well. Pravin has set a target of tripling revenues, before handing it over to the next generation. My question to Pravin: Will spirituality inhibit ambition? I didn’t really expect an answer from him. But I think his algorithms and passion will definitely drive Prescient to that figure.