He doodles planes of assorted sizes and shapes as he talks. Yet, 17 years ago, Mr Nihar Ranjan Samantara turned his back on a coveted aircraft-design job at the Defence Research Development Organisation's (DRDO) prestigious aerospace lab.
Defence scientists, one would imagine, continue to craft combat planes, missiles and such lethal stuff. This one, then 32 and armed with a seven-year stint at the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Bangalore, went on, as it were, to himself found or nurture some half a dozen companies, before letting them go. (Some of them made ripples.)
Full circle
It's full circle since Ignis happened in 2008. On his homing-in, Mr Samantara says, “Aerospace is my element, it must be in my DNA,” he now acknowledges. After all, he had designed the complex wing-skin of the nation's light combat aircraft — now called LCA or Tejas — which is set to join the air power in a few years.
The self-imposed
In the journey from Orissa's Cuttack to aero-hub Bangalore, Mr Samantara acquired a B.Tech and an M.Tech in aerospace engineering from Madras Institute of Technology. “When I came out of campus I had three job options — to join HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (Indian Space Research Organisation's rocket-making hub) and ADA. I picked ADA as it was just starting work on the prestigious LCA project. It was autonomous, less bureaucratic and I thought I should start my career on a fresh programme.”
‘don't regret'
About leaving a coveted public-sector post in seven years, he says: “I took the right decision and don't regret it.” What followed was a spree of start-ups: some of them his own. Ashok Leyland Infotech,; Trigent Software; BFL Software (a former semi-avatar of MPhasis); his own software firm Majoris that was promoted with ‘friend and guru' Mr B.V. Venkatesh (of the BFL fame) and funded twice by celebrity investor Mr Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (Majoris was bought over by Valtech in 2004); later Regency, apart from an unborn aerospace MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) outfit.
When the Ignis group was launched, age and size were its big challenges. It started with offshored solutions through a small US partner company and consultancy. A panel of aeronautics experts was leaving or retiring from HAL, its joint venture BAeHAL with the UK's BAE Systems, DRDO and similar places, and they were roped in to drive Ignis Aerospace & Design. They were also Mr Samantara's former associates who yearned for some kind of ownership of the company they worked for.
“We have four icons who are aces in their fields. Probably no other private Indian company has such a formidable ‘air' force that stretches from the drawing board to manufacturing,” says Mr Samantara. Having buddies around in key places also won half the battle. Ignis's chief executive and its avionics brain, Mr M.K. Govind, was earlier the head of BAeHAL Software; the structures chief, Mr A. Mohan, retired as an ace designer from HAL's Aircraft Research & Design Centre (ARDC); Mr R. Jayaraman, specialist consultant for flight-control systems, also worked on the LCA at HAL; Mr P. Jayasimha, also from HAL's ARDC, headed the LCA aerodynamics team. Then there is the close associate from past ventures, Mr Raj V.Gopal (now its Vice-President, Sales and Marketing).
‘Worth a chase'
Three years on, Ignis is a Rs 35-crore company showing profit from the year it started and earning from infotech and consultancy, but the old lessons are not lost on it. “Mainly because we did not repeat the mistakes we made with Majoris. At that time, we went all over the world during the recession when we should have kept the money safe in a bank.”
Today aerospace accounts for just a quarter of its revenue and its 300-member staff. Watch out, Mr Samantara says, this segment will tilt the balance in the company and in the country. His crystal ball shows more and more elite buying planes and chief executices flitting around in jets in 10 years, whether to make style statements as they do now with fancy cars, or to do business while they fly.
Mr Gopal paints the big picture for Ignis: “If there is a private sector alternative to HAL in core-design activities for aircraft programmes, and there aren't any, we would like to be that. It's a goal worth a chase.”