Dipankar Mitra: Conquering The Challenges Of This Mobile World And Leading By An Example

The high-paced evolution of technology has changed almost every aspect of human life. Ranging from daily lives to industrial activities, technological advancements have altered the way things process. From a business communication’s standpoint, enterprise mobility has emerged very recently and now evolved into an absolute must-have commodity. This humongous mobile industry is flourishing at a fast pace and probably within the next 3-5 years; every industry would need to adapt a mobile-first approach, which suggests that the possibilities for software solutions are endless. Expectedly, the mobile developers’ population has boomed, as a result, the numbers of mobile apps in the market are growing exponentially reaching new heights every other day. Moreover, the revenue generated by the global mobile app industry has skyrocketed. The top tech unicorns, for example, Grab in Malaysia, Alipay in China, and Paytm & Ola in India, all have taken a mobile-first approach that multiplied their revenue in less than a decade.

The unstoppable journey of the operator behind the scenes

With all the favorable circumstances in the mobility sector, it is not everyone’s cup of tea to reach at the peak of success. In late 2013, Dipankar Mitra, the Founder and CEO of Simbiotik Technologies Sdn. Bhd. had started to lead the technical division with great excitement. It was a short-lived excitement though, when things began to fall on a downward spiral very rapidly. About a year into the company, they did not have any sales in their pipeline; besides, shareholders confidence was at the lowest level. In addition to that, as they say, “to worsen the things” Simbiotik hired a technical team with a high burn rate, which was an inappropriate move.

Stuck in such a conjuncture, the team of Simbiotik was walking on a thin line with tough decisions to be made. To find an optimal way out, Dipankar and his partners found an only expedient so that the company could weather the storm and it was a complete overhaul of strategies. Moving ahead, they took over the Simbiotik’s management on 1^st of April 2015, and set out a 30, 60, and 90 days turnaround plan, and also set the vision for next 3 years. Eventually, the extreme measures came to fruition and the firm went from an almost zero revenue position in 2014 to nearly 3 million in 2015, by acquiring 17 new clients they became operationally profitable. They never looked back ever since and today Simbiotik has a team of more than 80 dedicated members working from its offices in Kuala Lumpur, Pune, and Bangalore. Moreover, presently the unshaken team of Simbiotik is operating with more than 40 satisfied clients, which include government agencies, GLCs, public listed companies, and start-ups. As a takeaway from the experience, Dipankar says that the adage “There is no substitute for hard work, perseverance, and honesty” kept him going through all the narrow paths. He shares that when you are honest with your situation, have complete faith in your team, and work hard together, no matter what the situation is, you will always find a way forward.

Complementing the phrase “Learning is a never-ending process”, Dipankar is always ready to learn new things. Moreover, in order to keep up with the rapid pace of the technological world, he tries to upgrade his skillsets through precocious courses. As an addition to his digital tech knowledge, the lifelong learner has recently completed an advanced management course on “Digital Transformation: From AI and IoT to Cloud, Blockchain, and Cybersecurity” from MIT.

Simbiotik Technologies: An Ever-Evolving Entity

Grown from a small software house to a well-established technology lab, Simbiotik Technologies was incepted in 2012. The Petaling Jaya, Selangor headquartered firm has its clients in Malaysia and ASEAN countries. The agile mobility solution provider has developed more than 20 mobile apps for several established organizations and start-ups alike. Its services cover a full spectrum of a software life cycle, starting from business consultations to software development, support, and maintenance. Speaking of the depth of verticals it has enveloped, the team of Simbiotik has now over 150-cumulative years of experience in Enterprise Mobile App development, e-wallet, and digital banking. With the elevated momentousness of technology in the finance sector, FinTech has become a very strong suit and consequently became Simbiotik’s major focus in recent times.

Additionally, ports and logistics is another vertical where Simbiotik has over 100-man years of combined experience. Notably, it is working with some of the largest ports in Malaysia and will soon mark its presence in 75+ ports worldwide through smart partnerships.

In this fast evolving tech era, it is essential to keep up with technological embellishments. Simbiotik’s team comes from the ranks of legacy technologies such as Java, DotNet, PHP and donning the backend Oracle, MS SQL, and MySQL. It has also invested heavily to be at par with the current trends of modern technologies such as AngularJS, NodeJS, AI, Machine learning, Bigdata, MongoDB, and NoSQL based Database.

Standing Tall with the Power of Affinity

A highly competitive business world is the result of extremely simple made technologies. It is no more an uphill battle to get into this space but to endure. To pull it through, one has to be exceptionally consistent and rigid with a panoramic approach. The members of Simbiotik constantly challenge the industry status quo with their innovations and ideas. The more outrageous the tasks are brought upon by their clients, the more excited they get. Most importantly, they stand out and stand tall because they consider themselves a family of happy techies who take in their clients to be part of it. Dipankar adds, “These are also innate qualities of all my colleagues at Simbiotik. We are a tough bunch with tenacity and strong resolve and we stand with our clients during their tough times, we rough it out together”.

In the long term, Dipankar and his team want their family to grow ginormously and endeavor to be much more disruptive and innovative than they are today.

Leaders are Made not Born

Leadership is an art; it is a set of innate traits, refined and perfected over time with education, training, and experience. One can become a leader through the process of teaching, learning, and observation. The courageous CEO of Simbiotik, Dipankar has come from a small town in Andaman and Nicobar Island. He grew up in a challenging environment that had naturally inculcated a problem-solving attitude and harnessed grit in him, which were essential for survival. When he was a part of the IT industry in India, he trotted the globe with NTT Data to Bangalore, Ireland, and UK, with HP and MIMOS to Malaysia, and with Cognizant to Singapore. According to him, early exposure to both the eastern and western work cultures, which are extremely different, changed his attitude towards work.

Moreover, the multiple projects that he was assigned to and led for different companies, had contributed to the entrepreneur that he eventually became. Having been through ebb and flow, Dipankar asserts, “Persistence and perseverance became my mantra”.

Nurturing the Future by Uplifting the Youth

Today’s youth is tomorrow’s future, they say, what would be better than nourishing the youth in order to strengthen the future? And so, Dipankar never leaves a chance to enrich the youngsters. Volunteering as an adviser at “MySkills Foundation”—an NGO that transforms the lives of at-risk youth—the seasoned personality spends a lot of his time with the kids. By the means of foundation, Dipankar strives to support youth who come from dysfunctional families, unsuitable living environments, lack spiritual values, live in poverty, have negative peer group influences or face unequal educational opportunities. He always tries to be a part of the efforts by MySkills, which intend equipping youth with right skills and placing them with proper jobs so they can be gainfully employed.

Furthermore, while expressing his experience with the NGO, Dipankar quotes, “Spending time with these children and seeing them grow beating all the odds of life shapes a person with a buoyant personality to address every challenging issue with meliorism. I bring this perspective to work.”