So, who is Dinesh Dhanapathi [outside of being the CEO of Symmetrix] ?

In search of a purpose

Though he started his career as a trainee programmer in 1982, he soon discovered that he wasn’t cut out for a programmer’s job. After changing careers a couple of times and moving from the Computer Age to the Stone Age, also working briefly as a supervisor with a granite exporter, he moved back to computers. He worked with companies such as Micro Advance and Computer Point where he learnt what it meant to provide sincere and committed after sales service to customers.

Dinesh Dhanapathi is a first generation entrepreneur, having been drawn into business way back in 1987 by three colleagues while working at India’s first computer retail chain, Computer Point India.

Humble beginnings of 33 years in IT services business

He and three of his colleagues from Computer Point started their first company, Hardsoft Solutions, in 1987. Early revenues also came from imparting training to customers on-site on the basics of Lotus 1-2-3, dBase III, Wordstar and DOS.

An 18-month stint as a co-promoter of an IT systems integrations company, Optimetrix, only added a little more experience and plenty of grey hair.

Dinesh has successfully co-founded 3 top ventures focused on customized IT solutions

On August 18th 2005, Dinesh revived Symmetrix Computer Systems (Incorporated in 1996 and a former group company of Hardsoft). Vijayakumar, who was a partner at Optimetrix, now heads Operations at Symmetrix. Sairam Shetty, who was co-promoter of Optimetrix continues to collaborate with Symmetrix on some fronts.

Shashikala Dinesh is his life and business partner. Shashikala was a practising Civil Lawyer before she joined as Partner at Symmetrix. Their daughter Disha has experience in Media and Digital Marketing and has recently completed a PGDM at the Indian School of Business. Their son Adith is a software developer for an eCommerce startup.

Symmetrix now has 40-plus employees, 500-plus customers and a turnover of over Rs. 25 crores through Symmetrix and its new group company, Exocore IT Solutions. The name Exocore came from Dinesh’s partnership with late Atul Chitnis, an open source evangelist.

For example, a company engineer happened to break a small statuette while setting up a wireless connection at a customer’s office. The statuette had sentimental value which could just not be compensated. The customer eventually reconciled himself to the loss of the statuette when the company offered to write off a pending bill worth a few thousand rupees. This customer continued to be in touch with the company. They served him at all his ventures after that. He also introduced Dinesh to the Australian state of Victoria’s India office, whose Bangalore office’s IT infrastructure the company set up. A small accommodation goes a long way sometimes.

Another customer, who was being advised wrongly by an external source, once accused the company of using a sub-standard configuration of processor. The company did not argue with him, nor accept the accusation. They demonstrated to him that they were right, but also decided to make a graceful exit from that customer, with honour intact. The customer returned later and has been with the company now for over two decades. His company depends solely on Symmetrix for all IT requirements.

Credibility matters. Symmetrix also takes pride in being compliant always in matters of taxation and regulatory matters. The company is also very prompt with payments to vendors.