(Bhupender is the Chief Executive Officer of Intelenet® Global Services. Bhupender exemplifies Intelenet’s commitment to deliver value to clients across the business lifecycle, with his penchant for aligning organizations to the ever-changing market demands. Bhupender is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a B – Tech from IIT Delhi. He was awarded gold medals at both IIT and IIM for his all-round performances.)
You have been through Intelenet’s growth journey –from being a few thousand to today, where Intelenet is a behemoth of an organization with ~55,000 employees offering award-winning services to clients across the globe.
What, according to you, has been a corner-stone for building and shaping Intelenet into what it is today?
Our philosophy of putting our “client needs first” is a core value at Intelenet. Our business, in its entirety, revolves around a single question – “How do we support our clients in growing their business?” While we have always been very focused on expanding our offerings and innovations, the larger mission has been to solve a client’s need. If one of our product or service stops creating value for a client, we are the first one to recommend pulling the same. Building long term relations and partnerships are much more important to us than processing transactions.
What’s your pecking order for the three important fundamentals – mission, vision and values?
We believe Values should always precede the Mission, and both these should guide the Vision. And if I can add a fourth point here – all these will come to a nought if one does not Execute. We, at Intelenet, believe our core values is the fuel that keeps our engine running. Helping our clients meet their strategic goals with maximum efficiency is our mission and everything else just follows suit.
Intelenet has been awarded with several accolades over the years. Gaining a much-coveted spot on the IDC FinTech Ranking 2017 has been the most recent feather in the cap for Intelenet. What makes Intelenet race ahead of its peers?
In one word – responsiveness. The world is evolving at a radical pace with businesses outracing the world at large. With growing business needs and an appetite for more refined products and services, we believe in creating value for our clients through innovation and efficient delivery models. We believe not only in responding quickly to the dynamic business needs, but also in creating innovative products and applications which hold the potential to serve latent needs. In line with this philosophy, we have and continue to invest in innovations, specifically into the digital segment.
You have been instrumental in making Intelenet and several of its employees successful. What is your mantra for personal success? Also, please touch upon your idea of being wealthy.
While success is quite a subjective term, the underlying ingredients remain constant – sharp focus, conscious efforts and persistence. Suggesting that I have been key in helping our employees grow as successful individuals is quite a generous credit; I may have been one of the catalysts, however, I would personally attribute everyone’s success to their own persistent efforts and staying the course. The mantra for personal success lies within oneself – it is important to discover oneself, align all energy towards the personal goals and keep at it relentless taking small or big setbacks in one’s strides.
‘Wealth’ as a word is quite abused. While many would use the term “wealth” synonymously with “abundant money”, I believe that wealth as a concept has many more facets.
Largely, wealth is a culmination of five types of wealth – financial, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. I believe one is truly wealthy only if he or she has acquired the five wealth-types sufficient to last a lifetime.
What’s your take on how should one approach personal finance and investing?
Personal finance, usually, is very personal. I can’t really throw a few percentages which will work equally well for everyone. However, having said that, I can share an insight into what do I personally believe in. One earns money to fulfill all needs for a lifetime. So, why just talk about savings and investments? I believe in bucketing my income for various purposes like – investing towards learning something new, leisure money, contingency money and investments. You may have more buckets with different percentages, but at the end, creating buckets will typically help sail your boat. Think of this as a periodic budget.
Talking about investments for monetary gains, equities, as an asset class, is known to deliver the best returns over the long run. However, I strongly advise against speculating or trying to time the markets. For anyone starting afresh, my counsel is always to seek professional guidance. Today, products like mutual funds have made life simpler for the common investor and with options like SIPs, the financial wealth-building process has become much more structured and disciplined.
What’s your piece of golden advice to the aspirational youth of today?
Today everybody has access to global information at just a click away, literally. The youth have an edge over the older generation – an information edge. I believe that the youth have a lot of potential to learn and innovate. My suggestion would be for them to leverage all available resources to disrupt systems, create change and finally make the world a better place to live in. And yes, enjoy your youth!
