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Madhu Payan Sharma, the Indian expat who turned entrepreneur at 57
Gulf News
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2/17/2025
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
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00:00
How many people do you know dare to dream at 57?
00:12
Well, I'm here to speak to a very enterprising gentleman who started and became an entrepreneur
00:20
at 57.
00:22
That's right.
00:23
I'm here to talk to Mr. Madhu Payan Sharma, who is the managing director and founder of
00:27
TechMart.
00:29
And we're here to know how he has been able to live successfully as an entrepreneur and
00:36
having created an amazing company like TechMart.
00:40
I'm Madhu Payan Sharma coming from Delhi.
00:43
I arrived in Dubai in 1980.
00:47
And my first job at the Jumbo Electronics was as a general manager looking after their
00:51
marketing activities.
00:53
I was there as a GM for about four or five years, and then later on became the director.
01:01
And by beginning of 1990, say exactly 92, I was the president of the company, which
01:10
remained till 2002 until I left the company.
01:15
It was a great company, great work, and we were working with 21 international brands.
01:21
And the responsibility was spanning in 11 countries from Japan to US.
01:27
So it was a great experience and therefore, so much was the confidence that one can always
01:34
do better in life alone.
01:39
So as a part of organization, 55 years was the retiring age of the people.
01:47
And I did not want to make an exception and I took that option and I left on the age.
01:56
However, after one year of time, I did a bit of a consulting in the various areas, especially
02:08
from gold manufacturers to telecom and whatnot.
02:13
And finally, I knew that I would be settling for a stable organization and stable business
02:21
structure so that it's sustainable.
02:26
So I had a very dear friend in Nokia as the vice president, and he helped me to develop
02:34
a new business activity for them, which was not a distributor responsibility, but which
02:41
was a partner of the company.
02:45
And we were known as OMEP, that is Original Manufacture Equipment Partners.
02:52
So the difference between the distributor and the partner is that this is the first
02:57
step which is very close to the relationship.
02:59
So we knew from the production plan for a full one year, the marketing plan, we made
03:04
it and therefore, our responsibility was packaging.
03:10
We would get from the factory in the original form.
03:13
So we had to do the packaging as well as norms distribution.
03:17
So we were given 16 countries to look after.
03:21
And we had to do the servicing.
03:22
So they got the warranties and whatnot, because piracy was our main competitor and marketing.
03:33
So the total gambit as the business cycle was concerned.
03:38
So for this business, TechMart was established.
03:43
So the basic means, technology and the markets, so this was.
03:47
So we opened the operations in Jabal Ali.
03:51
And then we had a subsidiary in UAE ourselves.
03:55
And in other countries, we worked with Nokia distributors, appointed them as distributors
03:59
and conducted all the activities.
04:02
So this was the beginning.
04:03
God has been very kind.
04:06
In the first year, we did quite a bit of business.
04:13
And we made a decent profit.
04:15
Now, there was no fear.
04:17
As a matter of fact, there was a tremendous amount of confidence that if I can do for
04:21
a very large organization, I'm practically doing the similar stuff on a smaller scale,
04:29
except that the products are different, the responsibilities are different, and I didn't
04:34
have as many resources as a big company would have it.
04:38
But that's the reason I selected to take up a business which would not require large capital,
04:45
which was accessory business.
04:48
In the mobile business, which I could also have taken up, it requires very large capital
04:54
and obviously would have been out of my reach.
04:57
So I didn't want to touch.
04:58
There were other negative areas of the mobile at that time.
05:02
But I stuck to something that I could handle.
05:05
Hi, my name is Neil Sharma.
05:07
I'm Mr. Sharma's son.
05:09
And I joined TechMart in almost 2011.
05:13
So I was a strategy consultant before then.
05:15
And the whole point was, as the organization was growing, I felt from my father, it takes
05:20
a lot more effort, a lot of excitement to actually do something for yourself.
05:25
And so we joined the organization.
05:27
It was a tremendous learning curve, learning about the business model, the partners.
05:32
And over time, we've been actually growing the organization today.
05:35
We have almost operations in about seven countries, we are 260 strong, we represent almost 30
05:41
global brands.
05:42
It's a very proud achievement what we've done on the footsteps of Mr. Sharma and of course
05:47
Mrs. Sharma at the same time.
05:49
And we've been very close to the team members.
05:51
A lot of the people who work with us have been there for almost 10, 15 years.
05:55
So although it's a small family operation, it's somewhere we feel very valued with the
06:01
people we work with, and with the partners we have.
06:04
When you started your career, was TechMart established?
06:07
No, I started my career working in Cisco Systems.
06:13
And at that time, your dad was employed?
06:14
Dad was Jambo.
06:15
So then I moved into a company called Boozman Company as a strategy consultant.
06:20
That's when you started working here.
06:21
So that's when I felt, okay, when we came back to Dubai, we said, okay, let's join family
06:27
and see what we can do together.
06:29
Well, the best part of Mr. Sharma is that he has adapted pretty well.
06:35
So one of the things we love about him is not me, it's my team members.
06:39
He works with everybody down from the salesperson to the senior managers.
06:44
I mean, he left yesterday, just came from Qatar to do a market visit, to work with the
06:48
partners to understand.
06:50
So markets keep changing, economics keep changing.
06:53
But the importance of what we learned is working with our partners, talking to our customers,
06:58
talking to the team.
06:59
Based on that, you define how you want to run the organization, because they are your
07:04
legs.
07:05
And they're the ones that can tell you this is the direction to take or not take.
07:09
And that's important learning we all have from Mr. Sharma is that you need to go at
07:13
every level and learn from them, because there's always something to learn.
07:18
And that's how we've got the organization.
07:20
I think you asked me about the question whether there was a fear at the time of starting this
07:24
is.
07:25
Well, the fact is, I said, No, let me support it further that whenever you are out of job
07:32
or let's say out of any activity, what takes, you know, as far as the fear is concerned,
07:37
one is how I'm going to manage.
07:39
And the second question is, can I really last longer?
07:43
So answer to the first question is a yes, professionally, I was very, very confident.
07:48
And economically, I had a very strong back.
07:53
And my wife at that time was working as a head of research and purchases in Dubai duty
07:58
free.
07:59
And she already had worked for 18 years.
08:02
She was one of the senior management team there.
08:05
And therefore, I knew that even if I don't have a job, at least I can look be looked
08:12
after by, you know, my wife.
08:16
So that was not the fear, the fear of losing or the fear of, let's say, losing out money
08:26
or whatever it is, is when you're not sure whether you're doing right or wrong.
08:32
In this case, it was the extension of my past activities, something that I always loved.
08:38
And therefore, I play a game which I know that I know the rules as well as that I can
08:43
manage it.
08:45
So these two things are very important.
08:47
And the fact is that we could have done much, much bigger in terms of various brands and
08:53
activities.
08:54
But the reality is that if I cannot manage them, I don't want to touch them.
09:01
Let's say the two most important things in life, once you cross 60 is a engagement.
09:10
We just came back from our IIMA 50th union in Bangalore and what we realized was at least
09:20
half of our age group people had problems, physical problems, mental problems.
09:27
And these things arise because there's no activity in life.
09:32
They retire and they sit at home.
09:35
So that needs to be eliminated.
09:38
Anything else for the health is concerned, one has to ensure the basics ABC and the God
09:43
has been kind.
09:44
I had a great, good help.
09:46
So we do play golf three times a week to make sure that there's some activity on that side
09:54
and also ensure that, you know, physically we are doing something or the other in terms
10:01
of physical exercises.
10:03
So these two important things keep us going on.
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