Focus On Growing Leaders: Kalyan Muppaneni, Pi Datacenters

Pi Datacenters, Asia’s largest Uptime Institute tier-4 certified data centre, is based in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh. Taking the humble credit for introducing mega data centres in India, Pi is focused on delivering futuristic data center and cloud solutions of global standards. The facility at Amaravati is intelligently built to house 5,000-plus racks, giving the customer the liberty to scale at will, in line with their business needs. Pi’s enterprise cloud platform, Harbour1 mirrors innovation, thought to re-engineer, backed by relentless industry research and technology assimilations.

On the importance of people and profits
It is equally important for every growing organisation to focus on the people aspect as well as the revenues and profits. It is important for the company to focus on growth of people’s skills and ensure the company has programmes and processes that drive continuous learning for the people to grow both horizontally and vertically. A high morale organisation will always be highly productive and contributes significantly to company’s growth. A highly productive organisation contributes to higher output while serving various clients and thereby contributing to higher revenues, stability, customer satisfaction and higher profits.

On what makes Pi datacenters a great place to work
Pi is a great place to work because we put people first and ensure they understand company’s vision and provide opportunities for expanding their skills on the job real-time. The nature of these opportunities make them learn much quicker in our organisation where it would take 3-4 times longer in an MNC. The benefits and work environment are equally world class in our company and no less than any MNC. Combination of these plus the management focus and the cutting edge technologies we work on sets us apart as a high trust and high performance company.

On the company’s evolution
We were very clear from Day 1 on the vision of the company and the goals  we need to achieve in five years. We made our priorities strictly around these goals and executed meticulously, this translated into immediate results early on and then we built further success incrementally based on the early wins. We did not get distracted by buzz of our non-core competencies, as our prime competency is delivering world class cloud and data centre services to our clients. We believe in growing leaders internally within the company – most of our senior to middle management have grown with the company over the last four years as they understand the values and culture upon which the company is built from Day 1. This helped us retain our values over this period of time. Our strategy is to quickly grow leaders from the existing employees than looking out, this gives our management a sense of ownership and pride as they carry on their duties.  

On People philosophy
We put people first in our organisation as we believe this vector is the foundation stone for the growth of the company. We always put a lot of emphasis on skill development on the job. This applies to both technology and leadership skills which help them grow into leaders. We would like Pi not only to be recognised as one of the great place to work for but also play a crucial role in empowering common man with the help of technology. In five years, we would like Pi to be recognised as a household brand through our products and services.

On the company’s road map
We plan to introduce new products and services in the next 18 months, which will give us recognition as one of the top Indian brands in the area of technology.