Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” ~ Steve Jobs. One of the greatest startup leaders of all time elucidates a vital fact that this tech-ade’s startups often forget. Given the vast nature of the technology realm, startups often end up following the predefined rules and previously walked paths that they deem safe. But the future belongs to the ones who invent that future. Inventing the future with cutting-edge technology innovations and infusing it with commitment, trust, and growth has been the success formula of Captiv Techno Solutions one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the country. Within three years of its inception, Captiv’s prestigious clientele, which includes, but is not limited to, Tech Mahindra, Zoho, Ford, Kia, Hyundai, Port of Chennai, Tamil Nadu Police, speaks for itself. The credit goes to its path breaking, inventive mindset and comprehensive services.

This progressive, emerging turnkey technology solutions company continues to catch eyeballs beyond the borders by delivering captivating, in-depth experiences to customers across the globe with its future ready solutions and services, thanks to a perfectly balanced team comprising a mix of industry veterans and energetic youngsters. The 2020-born Captiv is setting new industry standards under Chairman Saravanan Krishnamoorthy's strategic guidance. With a wealth of experience in both the private and public sectors, Saravanan is at the forefront of fostering innovation that benefits governments and enterprises alike. A seasoned digital transformation expert and change manager, Saravanan has successfully executed digital projects worth $40 million during his eight years in public service.

CIO Insider recently got in touch with Saravanan, and he was happy to walk us through Captiv's latest technology endeavors and the approach that led to the company’s success in a short span of time. Below is an excerpt from the interview.

How would you describe Captiv Techno Solutions as an Organization? Also, you have had an excellent growth journey over the past three years. Tell us about this journey.
We are a turnkey technology solutions

provider that excels in system integration and catering to government projects like Smart City and Safe City, as well as enterprises, especially Fortune 500 companies. Our key strength lies in bringing together cutting-edge, world-class technologies to produce solutions that solve sophisticated business pain points and provide unique experiences to end consumers. All our solutions are future-ready.

Despite launching during the pandemic, we have had an excellent journey so far. We hosted a three-fold growth in the first year itself, which was followed by another excellent year, clocking fivefold growth, and this year, we are again looking at a similar growth. We have an office in Singapore, contributing to our global perception, and we are all set to open our offices in Dubai & Manila. So, the journey has been phenomenal with our clientele already, including five Fortune 500 companies. Most importantly, the most satisfactory element of this growth journey has been our 100 percent customer retention ratio, both in terms of public sector and enterprise business.

available to them 24/7. Conventionally, to address any issue, they had to raise a token and wait in line for the OEMs to respond to the query and people from abroad to address it after a painstaking, slow process. Our customers are relieved from this, thanks to our center of excellence, dedicated teams with certified engineers assigned for each OEM, and, most importantly, our relationship with the OEMs. We have invested heavily in technology as well as manpower, not only by bringing in certified engineers but also by upskilling our existing employees. For instance, our new recruits join our force only after they complete their personality development course. Our oldest employee is 65 years old. Even he has to undergo personality tests periodically. That’s how customer experience and, in turn, repeated customers became a huge part of our success. Furthermore, we now have an implementation team for Google Solutions as well.

What has been the outcome of this approach? Could you walk us through a recent example depicting the challenges as well as the solution?
One of the most satisfying and challenging moments recently was when we provided a cuttingedge solution to the Government of India that the Prime Minister inaugurated. I am talking about a large community system that broadcasts a huge amount of information to multiple stakeholders with different systems and modules. The scale of the project made it challenging as the requirement was a robust solution that could not only withstand a large amount of information but integrate different functional departments in silos and make the systems of stakeholders talk to each other, which required sophisticated software. We matched this challenging, highly sophisticated need with an IBM middleware solution. Our team was quite good at solving this challenge and took home a lot of pride and praise.

Going forward, how is Captiv positioning itself in the technology industry? How would you describe the kind of niche you are creating in the technology space?
We are not into run-of-the-mill out sourcing, system integration, or digital transformation projects. We keenly focus on pure technology problems that only we can solve. We have had project offers from leading Indian MSIs and BPM companies, but we didn't take them up because they were conventional outsourcing projects and didn't match our bandwidth. We are creating our niche as a pure-play technology company and are one of the very few companies with genuine projects in the area of Artificial Intelligence. One of our AI solutions is being used by multiple Fortune 500 companies. Captiv is operating in the areas listed in Gartner's hype cycle for the next five years.