Raja Srinivas Nandigam- A Successful millennial entrepreneur driving citizen centric services and businesses

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Most of the great leaders seem to have a knack of leadership. But that is not the only thing that makes a leader great. A great leader is someone who can find the most innovative solutions when others fail to see any path around a problem. And to get to this, one needs years of expertise and a zeal and dedication to see past the barriers.

Business Iconic proudly features Mr.Raja Srinivas Nandigam in this issue of The Most Inspiring Business Leaders to Follow 2022 as a successful new generation entrepreneur with innovative ideas.

About the Leader-

Coming from a remote rural family background and Mr. Nandigam being the first person to venture out to explore, It was always his dream to be self-made and be fearless in meeting the set objectives. It was during his graduation period when he started dreaming about becoming an entrepreneur to make an impact on the departments and corporates which deal with citizen centric and e-governance activities.

In his own words on his aspiration towards “Entrepreneurship”….

“And soon realized that this fervour must be turned into action,  accordingly started laying the foundation brick by brick while being in the role of an enterprise solution architect.  The mind always tells that situation should not dictate the journey instead one should align the situation into the ambitions”.”

His several years of real-time experience as a “Solution Architect” and an “Enterprise Architect”, all this while working with various multi-national companies has only pushed him towards his goal of entrepreneurship. In all these years of service, Mr. Raja considers himself fortunate enough to gain an abundance of knowledge and confidence about the ways he can drive and be a part of his customers’ transformation journey.

To summarize, his skill set, experience, business acumen and expertise in Software Development, Consulting, Business Transformation encompassing a diverse array of technologies has helped in driving business, innovation, strategy, setting up new avenues, building teams, and creating sustainable businesses.

Challenges in the Journey-

Directly coming out from big corporates where Mr. Raja has been working as per the pre-defined objectives versus having his own start-up was all together a different ball game needing completely shift of a mind-set overnight.

The fact that some one else was driving you till yesterday and now you seeing overall picture from a CEO’s chair needed that aggression to achieve something on your own day on day, month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year needs every moment introspection while taking care of your team members.

Being a start-up, there were much more chaos at first, since tasks were typically much more critical and time bounded too. Another challenge was that when RNIT has started, his first targeted customers were also going through uncertain change with respect to the upcoming new governance and hence more time was needed for stabilization under the new governance even before they could give us a hearing.

Another big damper was COVID 19 pandemic within a year of establishment and the company was on the road scouting for new opportunities when the entire world was within the four walls.

However, setting up a start-up is also much more rewarding. Not only will you reap the benefits, experience and know-how, but you will also have full responsibility.

Mr.Raja proudly quotes that…

“In the end, I think it’s a much more exciting and inspiring experience. A crucial point is that timing is everything i.e. connecting the right customer at right time is the stepping stone as part of the journey.”

What Makes the Difference?

Being a driving force of RNIT, there are several accomplishments which started as his brain child and soon turned into the necessity to the respective departments as large scale implementations across the respective departments.

He recalls his journey stating that…..

There are quite a few unique ideas which just started as a mere idea and now became a necessity for the respective departments as part of their day to day activities. These solutions now created a huge buzz across various states as part of ‘Digital India’ mission.”

It gives me immense satisfaction that RNIT, being such a young and new generation IT Solutions and services company, it has been recognized as a well-known brand for massive/large scale deployments as part of Digital transformation programs across the country.

A few of those successful and mission critical massive implementations are –

• State wide rollout of “Artificial Intelligence based Facial Identification Solution” for one of the southern states which is used every month for identification of various social beneficiaries who avail social benefits offered by the department. This is the first of it’s kind of large-scale AI based implementation in Government sector, here the department had been facing several challenges during the identification of beneficiaries for whom traditional biometric & IRIS devices are failing in the process. This AI based FRS roll out had created a big buzz in the market as a success story resulting into significant savings in the procurement and associated maintenance costs.
• Icing on the cake to the department is that this touchless solution in this pandemic situation has become a new norm now. Department users are confidently now going to the respective beneficiaries with this solution in hand and disbursing the pensions which was not the case with the earlier solutions.
• Another such instance is “state wide massive roll out” of our AI based identification of 60 lakhs plus students and several lakhs of teaching and non-teaching staff across one of the largest North eastern states has now become a role model to other states in the education sector. This is a first of it’s kind of implementation within India on such a large scale volume. Along with this a comprehensive student and staff management digital platform helped the entire state’s education department in getting a 360 degree view of the entire department landscape with just a click of a button…i.e. a big relief from the dependencies on the manually prepared reports to the authorities.
• Successful State wide massive implementations of “Comprehensive digital platforms” for two different citizen centric departments through open source ERP technology has become a big success in one of the southern states. These respective departments have become our brand ambassadors in show casing these solutions to their counter parts in other states as this is an innovative and fist of it’s kind of implementation within India.
• RNIT is also a technical partner in the implementation of a paperless 360 degrees solution which is a one of it’s kind of automotive product within India, for one of a leading corporate player in the private sector.
• The company has seen the opportunity to enable various government departments with niche technologies as part of their citizen centric transformation journey, whilst meeting consumer need– which is why he founded RNIT. Being an entrepreneur, gives the freedom to pursue the organization goals in-line with the set vision.
• Mr.Raja with his years of expertise in technological acumen and envisaging into futuristic educational trends- is instrumental in anchoring a new edtech startup towards its set vision.

Having a clear road map for next decade, Mr.Raja strongly reiterates that next 10 years will be India’s turn with respect to the digital transformation and concludes that….

“Brand RNIT is already in the big league and to record double digit growth for next few years with rapid expansion across the domains and geographies. Being a hard core techno-entrepreneur at heart, it truly encompasses my passion for helping others in particular to those citizen centric departments who are into day to day activities of serving our citizens of the country.”