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Great leaders are the biggest drivers of a company. They create a vision and motivate everyone around them to become part of that big goal. Having a great executive at the helm is something investors, workers, and even consumers want. Jai Chitkara is one such leader who is contributing to the IT-sphere with passion and dedication.
Jai Chitkara, the CEO of KTech Products, has over 25 years of leadership and IT program management experience across multiple industry verticals. He has managed many multimillion-dollar IT projects and big-sized project teams with a 100% success rate in big and small consulting companies, higher education, public sector, retail, oil and gas, media, golf, manufacturing, fleet maintenance, food service, and pharmaceutical, and has played all types of roles in the IT sector. Recognizing his contributions, Jai was recognized with the UiPath MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award in2021. Jai shares that his experience collaborating with the CIOs, AVPs, CFOs, Controllers, Finance Directors, HR VPs, Vice-Chancellors, Provosts, and various department heads have resulted in creating innovative solutions that focus on customer success.
Jai describes how he has encountered many problems just like every other human being and believes that one's character gets developed only by overcoming those hardships. He learned his first life lessons by watching his hard-working father and his mother, who was the master of developing connections and relationships. His father, then 13, along with his family, migrated from Pakistan to India in 1947 during the India-Pakistan partition time after getting freedom from England. Jai, who was born in 1971, grew up watching and hearing stories about how his father and other family members had to struggle to rebuild their lives many times to survive, including how difficult it was for his father to put food on the table daily to feed a family of 7 and cousins.
During his early youth, after losing two years during his engineering degree, Jai learned a life lesson to not compare with others but to compare with himself. He followed a principle: "Do better today than yesterday, do better tomorrow than today." which he still follows to keep going no matter what.
Jai recollects the time he was visiting a customer in Seattle. He recalls his accident, where he broke his kneecap into two pieces and had major surgery. With a no-compromise spirit, while recovering in bed and managing multiple physical therapy appointments per week, he was able to make two clients go live at the same time.
While working for UT Dallas, Jai got an opportunity to lead a project for UT Dallas and the UT System. He led that project with the mission of building a strong relationship between both organizations. He was able to do all of that while taking care of his kids and his mother-in-law's surgery.
Jai mentions that his mentors taught him to not compromise and always create a win-win situation in his life. He further adds that, recently, he had the experience of working for a midsize consulting company, building 3new practices from the ground up within one year, helping them achieve US$2+ million in revenue and gross margin above 75%.
With these experiences, Jai has gained and also developed an understanding of humility, passion, and meaning in his life. Presently, in his current role at KTech, Jai is enjoying creating new opportunities for his employees and customers by creating new jobs in the market and advancing the economy.
Jai opines that the initial phase of his CEO journey was filled with several challenges, like creating multiple teams to align with his vision, learning to prioritize amongst many tasks (sales, pre-sales, marketing, solutioning, managing onshore and offshore teams), how to manage a business, retaining employees, rebuilding the teams after losing employees, and encouraging himself every day to give his 100% to keep winning. He remembers how KTech won its first customer within 15 days after becoming the CEO and then lost the same customer in the next 10 days. For Jai, another challenge on a personal front was when his wife lost her job just a month after he started his journey as a CEO. He explains that the company had to stand with each other and sail through, which Jai, his partners, and the team did splendidly. They built a team of 50+ employees and turned an initial investment into 850%+ booked revenue within a year.
Speaking about the composition of qualities in a perfect leader, Jai states, "The first most important attribute is related to your employees. You need to develop the eye to find the good and the strengths of your employees and then cultivate and polish them." Employee success is equal to customer success. Happy employees mean happy customers, adds Jai.
According to him, the second important attribute is to establish open communication enterprise-wide. Always communicate 360 degrees. The absence of communication leads to perceptions and confusion. From his point of view, the third attribute for leaders is to always push themselves to learn new skills that are relevant to their service offerings.
While considering technology, Jai observes that it exists to solve a business problem, fulfill a need, or transform the business. He explains that one must find the gaps in the market, listen to, and understand the customers' pain points in business, and partner up with them. Jai adds, "It is always ideal to show quick wins early in a project to ensure the client's buy-in, commitment, and involvement." This strengthens the partnership, and customers get involved in improving the product and services.
Jai expresses that at KTech, the employees truly feel an intelligent amalgamation of technologies such as robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud deployments, IoT, business intelligence, and analytics enhancing and meeting today's needs for innovation at a very fast speed and that they will continue to rule the IT space by bringing in innovative solutions to customer problems. He believes that the role of a leader has changed to adapt to these new disruptive technologies, embrace them, invest in them, and help implement them to make customers' lives better.
Jai says he is confident that KTech will continue to focus on creating and enhancing innovative solutions that bring true business transformations for its clients by helping society in general and improving their lives and operations. KTech would serve as a true long-term partner to its clients, enabling them with digital transformation assessments, product roadmaps, timelines, and the right technology to use to achieve the organization's goals and objectives. Jai, on the whole, sees a future filled with new opportunities and spirits.
"Listen to your customers and assess their requirements as thoroughly as possible. Care for your employees, empower them, and give them a candid work atmosphere that offers both career growth and learning opportunities," says Jai to the future leaders. He believes that every employee can be productive and that the company will just have to provide them with the right environment, support, and tools for them to blossom. He aims to do whatever it takes to make his employees and customers successful, and hence, Jai advises future leaders to lead by example.
KTech Products, LLC is a Dallas, Texas-based digital technology company, that is focused on customer success through innovation, automation, and business transformation using digital technologies and rapid implementations. KTech specializes in Business Process Optimizations, AI-enabled Robotic Process Automation (RPA) implementations and managed services, AI-enabled Chatbots, AI/ML platforms, analytical Optical Character Recognition (OCR), mobile OCR, intuitive UIs, enterprise application test automation, and automated access controls/audit controls.
Some of KTech's key digital transformation solutions are accounts payable/invoice and PO, reconciliation automation, accounts receivable/billing automation, student transcript OCR to student information system (aka DigiScript), student success, online admission application (OAA), mobile expense reimbursement and auditing automation (MobilEx), and Enterprise Test Automation Suite (TASK) for on-premise and cloud enterprise applications.
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