Sonny Gupta: Defining Success Through Integrity


For Sonny Gupta, President and CEO of Maintec Technologies,success is based on two things: anticipating the market and working with integrity. After a very successful career at IBM, Gupta launched Maintec almost 15 years ago providing mainframe outsourcing, data center management and IT staffing. A keen observer of market trends, Gupta steered his company's focus to areas based on market needs. As Maintec grew and faced challenges, Gupta led his company into new business territory and successfully adapted Maintec's competency to provide the best solutions for its clients.
Today, Maintec provides a range of services such as data center collocation, mainframe hosting, operation support, system support and zLinux-in a-Box in the Data Center outsourcing segment; staff augmentation, remote IT staffing and Hire Train Deploy in the staffing segment. Maintec’s future strategy includes providing capabilities of Maintec zSeries and iSeries cloud environments.

Gupta is always looking towards the future of Maintec Technologies., The company is now uniquely positioned to service customer requirements by leveraging its tenets of quality and innovation, self-sustaining process framework and domain knowledge, a core team that helps clients solve intricate challenges in implementing large scale, complex and business critical IT development and integration programs.

"We are leveraging new technologies such as Cloud, Big Data, ERP and also by tapping untouched geographies such as APAC, Middle East, Africa to name a few," he adds with excitement. "Maintec is committed to helping clients reduce TCO (Total Cost of Operation) of data center management, overcome resourcing challenges and providing the industry with well-trained talent."

A Leader Up to the Challenge

Gupta endorses the importance of ethics and principles and he never shies away from talking about the business challenges he has faced as CEO of Maintec.

"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world," he says. And one of his core ethics is leading by example. He believes one learns more from overcoming a challenge than from experiencing easy success. Therefore, he treats every challenge as a stepping stone to greater opportunity.

Under Gupta's leadership, Maintec is changing how outsourcing is done.

Shifting the Training Paradigm

Gupta has a keen eye for a client's needs and truly believes that the IT industry is plagued with a scarcity of skilled resources, especially candidates who understand the intricacies and interim needs of mainframes. Therefore, Gupta is addressing this need through in-depth training.

Maintec developed Hire-Train-Deploy (HTD), a turnkey, no-obligation solution for clients that develop employees deeply educated in niche skills not readily available in the Indian market. Maintec's approach is unique to other staffing providers because it selects people according to its client’s rigorous selection criteria. Candidates who meet the criteria are hired by Maintec and are taken through a rigorous training of skills, domain, behavior and, eventually, a prototype project. After which they go through a final evaluation. If they pass this scrutiny, they are transitioned to the client's team.

“The entire procedure seems straight forward but it is very process-oriented. We make sure we are doing the due diligence and test every candidate on the front end. We create candidates ready for assignments of 12, 18 or 24 months," explains Gupta. The process is focused on providing the highest trained candidates available who can meet the current and future needs of Maintec clients.

Maintec makes these candidates market ready by also providing training in "soft skills" like communication. These soft skills are important in a candidate’s successful career journey, therefore Maintec includes it in its HTD model to boost a candidate's ability to work in a client's team environment. Maintec is also committed to providing niche skills training through the various subject matter experts (SME) it brings in from all over the world to serve as instructors.

"Wherever we find a SME, we bring them here and pay them as per international standard. While cost does matter, what we are truly focused on is the end result of an elite, well-trained candidates," adds Gupta. "Clients benefit from this investment because they are able to execute more projects with improved delivery while eliminating the challenges one faces without qualified resources." This paradigm shift of how to train candidates is a strong differentiator for Maintec.

Exploring New Avenues of Technology

Gupta recognizes the offshore infrastructure management market could realize approximately $28 billion by 2013, with India capturing around 50 percent of the market share. And with Maintec already having a strong presence in India, Gupta has decided to leverage the available infrastructure and, coupled with Maintec's training expertise; provide a one of a kind data center in India.

Maintec will establish a 15000 sq. ft. infrastructure mainframe environment in Bangalore to house a data center, a training center and other internal requirements.
“We are not just providing services but additional technology and moving up beyond the basic work making a win-win-win situation for us, our clients and their customers. This will help us move forward in the value chain,” explains Gupta.

Maintec's in-house complete z/OS infrastructure, deep expertise and proven practices will provide world class mainframe services enabling organizations to achieve greater efficiency and improved quality at an optimum cost. Its mainframe systems programmers and operators specialists with step in virtually manages an organization's mainframe operations 24/7 freeing up the in-house resources to focus on their core business.
Keeping true to his leadership paradigm, Gupta desires to continue to give back to the local community and create sustainable business growth. The company’s plan is to grow exponentially, looking at $20million by 2015. To accomplish this, Gupta is establishing partnerships by talking to several companies about merger or acquisition opportunities to strengthen Maintec's internal technology standpoint.

It is all about People

Gupta believes in the fact that we are in people business first and then technology. We do not have machines to produce goods or products for us. Our raw material is human intellect. A company is as good as its people. Unfortunately, a number of large companies have forgotten the people equation. There is no question that numbers matter and the same time people matter as well.

"In a cut throat world of business, what separates great companies from good companies is how they treat their people. In the early years of my career, thought of leaving the organization to go work for any other company did not exist. I would like to set up a similar culture at Maintec Technologies," explains Gupta.

Maintec will be announcing several new initiatives in near future to ensure that the people equation is not forgotten and perhaps start unprecedented trend in the industry with new and innovative HR policies.

Success Founded on Integrity and Corporate Social Responsibility

Gupta's 30 years in the technology industry tell an illustrious story:a successful career working for IBM, starting a business whose roster of clients include IBM, Accenture, Wipro, HCL, TechM and several other mid-tier organizations and adapting his company to meet ever-changing market needs. Gupta credits his success as an entrepreneur to a leadership style grounded in strong ethics. He believes in it so much, it is the foundation Maintec is built upon.

"It is absolutely critical for me to make sure that as Maintec moves forward as a company, it is based on principals strong enough not to be broken. When I take my brand out to my clients, I ensure to fulfill each word I commit."
Gupta leads by example in corporate social responsibility as well.

For over 10 years, Maintec has proudly supported the Brahmi Educational and Cultural Trust, a nonprofit humanitarian and educational organization in Bangalore. Each year the company spends a certain percentage of its revenue or profit, whichever is higher, for its corporate social responsibility activities.
"We are planning to organize an event to create awareness from individual perspective that every individual can make a difference. Along with big corporates, if mid-sized and small businesses also play a bit of their role in corporate social responsibility, perhaps things will change very quickly."

Other organizations Maintec remains committed to are Karunashraya, National Association for the Blind, Cancer Aid and Research Foundation and HelpAge India.

Gupta believes in the abundance principal and says that his success is grounded in leadership that leads by example, adapts when necessary and provides a strong ethical foundation. His expertise coupled with his work ethic and philanthropy has created a business model of success.

With Gupta at the helm, Maintec is sure to continue its growing success meeting client needs.

About Maintec


Maintec Technologies has been providing mainframe outsourcing, data center management and IT staffing for over 20 years. With a wide range of data center management and data center outsourcing services, Maintec Technologies provides a cost-effective and efficient way to develop, implement and run business-critical applications 24x7, without upfront capital investment. Maintec Technologies provides onshore data center outsourcing, mainframe colocation, and data center management services for enterprises that rely on IBM Mainframes (System z, Linux for z) and IBM Power Systems (IBM i, AIX, Linux). Please go to Maintec's website at www.maintec.com or contact Sonny Gupta directly at info@maintec.com