Abstract
Opening Paragraph and Mahesh’s Dilemma1, 2, 3
Mr Mahesh Deshpande (Mahesh) as an information technology (IT) professional progressed well in his home country of India. This was during the first wave of the IT industry boom initially in the 1990s in India. Mahesh moved to Japan to work in the IT industry. Mahesh also did well economically (as an individual) as well as professionally in Japan by the first half of the decade of the 2000s. Mahesh had substantive and deep domain experience in the fintech industry at a global level. He was increasingly being told by his well-wishers to start up his own venture because of his rich experience in fintech. Fintech in the late 1990s and early 2000s was a booming industry. Mahesh pondered after so many years of being a high-ranking executive in a reputed French firm in Japan. The dilemma of setting up his own enterprise in the domain of fintech was nurturing in Mahesh’s mind. Mahesh’s first dilemma was that should he leave the comfort of his high-paying secured stable job and start a new technology venture. Mahesh’s second dilemma was that should he set up his new venture in a foreign land (that being Japan) or in his own homeland (that being India). Mahesh was reflecting in retrospection on his own life to secure answers to a couple of dilemmas present in the year 2007.
Challenges in the Early Life of Mr Mahesh Deshpande1, 2
Mahesh was born in the town of Wani a few hundred kilometres from Nagpur in the western state of Maharashtra in central India. Though Mahesh’s father was a lawyer, his family was primarily involved in agriculture. Early life had thus centred around a rural agrarian life. Mahesh first went to school in the third standard only. Mahesh was a good student thus post his schooling he got admission into Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur, a reputed institute in Maharashtra, India. Mahesh in the year 1987, started Mahesh’s studies in the coveted electronics engineering stream of VNIT, Nagpur, India. However, having secured admission Mahesh was not able to afford the academic as well as the hostel fees to study at VNIT and stay in the city of Nagpur. Mahesh sought from a nationalized Indian bank an education loan. The bank manager of the bank helped him get an education loan without much difficulty. This was a significant help for Mahesh. Furthermore, to make his end needs, Mahesh also worked in a firm in Nagpur while studying electronics engineering at VNIT. He undertook side jobs as a programmer and travelled all across the industrial city of Nagpur for additional income. In the year 1991, Mahesh completed his education and secured a job in a reputed IT firm in India. In the early 1990s, the Indian economy was getting shaped by the growing Indian IT industry. This was because Indian IT firms were becoming the centrepiece of the global IT Industry especially in the back-office outsourcing space of developed country firms.
Being in Japan as a Professional
After working for this reputed firm for two years, Mahesh was provided the opportunity to work out from Japan. Mahesh always had the United States of America (USA) as the final destination in mind, but he tentatively went ahead and settled in Japan for work. Mahesh’s emotions and dreams were in the USA, but he was physically living in Tokyo in the mid-1990s. Mahesh’s superiors in the organization where Mahesh was working were integrated into the Japanese culture. They were fluent in Japanese language. The office seniors advised Mahesh to learn Japanese quickly. They also advised Mahesh that he be present both emotionally and physically in Japan. Mahesh did this then and soon realized that being in Japan was excellent. The Japanese were generally very polite and encouraging. Japan was a country that was sophisticated, highly skilled, a leader in technology and had very good infrastructure. Soon Japan became the second home for Mahesh as he recalibrated his mind. In the mid-1990s, Mahesh had to visit India for some personal exigency. At this juncture, Mahesh secured an offer from a French financial firm (a global giant) to join as a very senior executive. Mahesh had his own set of difficulties with his extant core technical capabilities during this phase. This was because Mahesh had worked with mainframe technology. Mahesh was working with languages like ALGOL. In the job with a French investment giant, he was expected to learn C++. This was challenging as Learning C++ from mainframes was difficult. However, Mahesh learned C++ and joined the French firm. The task for Mahesh at the French firm was to digitize the manual operations of the stock exchange regarding the trading transactions with the investors. Mahesh worked hard at the French firm and learned the new skills in this fast-paced high-technology space of financial-technology industries. Mahesh learned a lot from the talented individuals both from the world of finance and technology at the French firm. He also interacted with Japanese, French, Singaporean, Indian, Americans and a varied base of nationalities. This helped Mahesh develop a knack of working with smart people from different countries in a multicultural foreign setup. Because of his good work, he was promoted as the head of technology for this French firm. Mahesh’s Chief Technology Officer role was between the years of 2003 and 2007. In this capacity, Mahesh learned and developed the hands-on leadership skills required at the CXO level in small early-stage ventures.
Nozomi Infotech Private Limited; the Journey and the Road Ahead1, 2, 3
Mahesh set up Nozomi Infotech Private Limited in Tokyo, Japan in the year 2007. Nozomi Infotech was a financial services IT firm. Nozomi Infotech was focused only on the business domain of the financial market. Mahesh during his tenure of over a decade in the largest French investment bank had developed a digitized trading platform. Mahesh had developed this platform indigenously, which traded around 20% of Nikkei futures by the year 2021. This system was providing support for 300 plus trading terminals globally and involved in 100 plus FIX sessions. All the work was done by Mahesh and his team from scratch. The main characteristics of the IT-enabled trading system were built by Mahesh and his team. This was aided by those developed by BNPP and Calyon, which were the front runners of DMA and the e-brokerage business in Asia. Nozomi Infotech followed a ‘Hub and Spoke ‘network which linked to all major exchanges as well as the brokers globally. This was carried out with the Nozomi Data Centre located at the KVH data centre in Tokyo, Japan. The target market for Nozomi Infotech consisted of entities like large investment banks, brokerage firms, banks, exchanges, hedge funds and asset managers. By June 2021, the Nozomi Infotech trading platform (Table 1) was linked to 16 exchanges globally.
The Exchanges Associated with Nozomi Infotech.
Nozomi Infotech had operations in India for product development and maintenance. The advantage of India offshore stemmed because of the cost advantage and good quality IT workforce. Nozomi Infotech also introduced a Virtual Trading System in association with Tokyo Commodity Exchange. Mahesh wanted to expand to the lucrative financial markets of Europe and the USA. Mahesh was also keen to have agreements (Independent Software Vendor) with exchanges for business in future like the Bombay Stock Exchange, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, National Stock Exchange, India, and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Mahesh was also planning to have another Nozomi Infotech data centre in Singapore. The big question was whether setting up Nozomi in Japan was a good decision and charting out the road ahead for Nozomi Infotech.
