Madhu Payan Sharma, the Indian expat who turned entrepreneur at 57

Gulf News

Who says retirement is a time to give up working? It certainly is not the case for this 77-year-old Indian businessman living in Dubai.  Madhu Payan Sharma dared to dream at 57 after he retired from a role as President for Jumbo Electronics – a leading company in Dubai.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/uae/video-madhu-payan-sharma-the-expat-who-turned-entrepreneur-at-57-1.96114314  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #Indian #Dubai

Transcript

00:00How many people do you know dare to dream at 57?

00:12Well, I'm here to speak to a very enterprising gentleman who started and became an entrepreneur

00:20at 57.

00:22That's right.

00:23I'm here to talk to Mr. Madhu Payan Sharma, who is the managing director and founder of

00:27TechMart.

00:29And we're here to know how he has been able to live successfully as an entrepreneur and

00:36having created an amazing company like TechMart.

00:40I'm Madhu Payan Sharma coming from Delhi.

00:43I arrived in Dubai in 1980.

00:47And my first job at the Jumbo Electronics was as a general manager looking after their

00:51marketing activities.

00:53I was there as a GM for about four or five years, and then later on became the director.

01:01And by beginning of 1990, say exactly 92, I was the president of the company, which

01:10remained till 2002 until I left the company.

01:15It was a great company, great work, and we were working with 21 international brands.

01:21And the responsibility was spanning in 11 countries from Japan to US.

01:27So it was a great experience and therefore, so much was the confidence that one can always

01:34do better in life alone.

01:39So as a part of organization, 55 years was the retiring age of the people.

01:47And I did not want to make an exception and I took that option and I left on the age.

01:56However, after one year of time, I did a bit of a consulting in the various areas, especially

02:08from gold manufacturers to telecom and whatnot.

02:13And finally, I knew that I would be settling for a stable organization and stable business

02:21structure so that it's sustainable.

02:26So I had a very dear friend in Nokia as the vice president, and he helped me to develop

02:34a new business activity for them, which was not a distributor responsibility, but which

02:41was a partner of the company.

02:45And we were known as OMEP, that is Original Manufacture Equipment Partners.

02:52So the difference between the distributor and the partner is that this is the first

02:57step which is very close to the relationship.

02:59So we knew from the production plan for a full one year, the marketing plan, we made

03:04it and therefore, our responsibility was packaging.

03:10We would get from the factory in the original form.

03:13So we had to do the packaging as well as norms distribution.

03:17So we were given 16 countries to look after.

03:21And we had to do the servicing.

03:22So they got the warranties and whatnot, because piracy was our main competitor and marketing.

03:33So the total gambit as the business cycle was concerned.

03:38So for this business, TechMart was established.

03:43So the basic means, technology and the markets, so this was.

03:47So we opened the operations in Jabal Ali.

03:51And then we had a subsidiary in UAE ourselves.

03:55And in other countries, we worked with Nokia distributors, appointed them as distributors

03:59and conducted all the activities.

04:02So this was the beginning.

04:03God has been very kind.

04:06In the first year, we did quite a bit of business.

04:13And we made a decent profit.

04:15Now, there was no fear.

04:17As a matter of fact, there was a tremendous amount of confidence that if I can do for

04:21a very large organization, I'm practically doing the similar stuff on a smaller scale,

04:29except that the products are different, the responsibilities are different, and I didn't

04:34have as many resources as a big company would have it.

04:38But that's the reason I selected to take up a business which would not require large capital,

04:45which was accessory business.

04:48In the mobile business, which I could also have taken up, it requires very large capital

04:54and obviously would have been out of my reach.

04:57So I didn't want to touch.

04:58There were other negative areas of the mobile at that time.

05:02But I stuck to something that I could handle.

05:05Hi, my name is Neil Sharma.

05:07I'm Mr. Sharma's son.

05:09And I joined TechMart in almost 2011.

05:13So I was a strategy consultant before then.

05:15And the whole point was, as the organization was growing, I felt from my father, it takes

05:20a lot more effort, a lot of excitement to actually do something for yourself.

05:25And so we joined the organization.

05:27It was a tremendous learning curve, learning about the business model, the partners.

05:32And over time, we've been actually growing the organization today.

05:35We have almost operations in about seven countries, we are 260 strong, we represent almost 30

05:41global brands.

05:42It's a very proud achievement what we've done on the footsteps of Mr. Sharma and of course

05:47Mrs. Sharma at the same time.

05:49And we've been very close to the team members.

05:51A lot of the people who work with us have been there for almost 10, 15 years.

05:55So although it's a small family operation, it's somewhere we feel very valued with the

06:01people we work with, and with the partners we have.

06:04When you started your career, was TechMart established?

06:07No, I started my career working in Cisco Systems.

06:13And at that time, your dad was employed?

06:14Dad was Jambo.

06:15So then I moved into a company called Boozman Company as a strategy consultant.

06:20That's when you started working here.

06:21So that's when I felt, okay, when we came back to Dubai, we said, okay, let's join family

06:27and see what we can do together.

06:29Well, the best part of Mr. Sharma is that he has adapted pretty well.

06:35So one of the things we love about him is not me, it's my team members.

06:39He works with everybody down from the salesperson to the senior managers.

06:44I mean, he left yesterday, just came from Qatar to do a market visit, to work with the

06:48partners to understand.

06:50So markets keep changing, economics keep changing.

06:53But the importance of what we learned is working with our partners, talking to our customers,

06:58talking to the team.

06:59Based on that, you define how you want to run the organization, because they are your

07:04legs.

07:05And they're the ones that can tell you this is the direction to take or not take.

07:09And that's important learning we all have from Mr. Sharma is that you need to go at

07:13every level and learn from them, because there's always something to learn.

07:18And that's how we've got the organization.

07:20I think you asked me about the question whether there was a fear at the time of starting this

07:24is.

07:25Well, the fact is, I said, No, let me support it further that whenever you are out of job

07:32or let's say out of any activity, what takes, you know, as far as the fear is concerned,

07:37one is how I'm going to manage.

07:39And the second question is, can I really last longer?

07:43So answer to the first question is a yes, professionally, I was very, very confident.

07:48And economically, I had a very strong back.

07:53And my wife at that time was working as a head of research and purchases in Dubai duty

07:58free.

07:59And she already had worked for 18 years.

08:02She was one of the senior management team there.

08:05And therefore, I knew that even if I don't have a job, at least I can look be looked

08:12after by, you know, my wife.

08:16So that was not the fear, the fear of losing or the fear of, let's say, losing out money

08:26or whatever it is, is when you're not sure whether you're doing right or wrong.

08:32In this case, it was the extension of my past activities, something that I always loved.

08:38And therefore, I play a game which I know that I know the rules as well as that I can

08:43manage it.

08:45So these two things are very important.

08:47And the fact is that we could have done much, much bigger in terms of various brands and

08:53activities.

08:54But the reality is that if I cannot manage them, I don't want to touch them.

09:01Let's say the two most important things in life, once you cross 60 is a engagement.

09:10We just came back from our IIMA 50th union in Bangalore and what we realized was at least

09:20half of our age group people had problems, physical problems, mental problems.

09:27And these things arise because there's no activity in life.

09:32They retire and they sit at home.

09:35So that needs to be eliminated.

09:38Anything else for the health is concerned, one has to ensure the basics ABC and the God

09:43has been kind.

09:44I had a great, good help.

09:46So we do play golf three times a week to make sure that there's some activity on that side

09:54and also ensure that, you know, physically we are doing something or the other in terms

10:01of physical exercises.

10:03So these two important things keep us going on.

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