Fervent Digital Pvt.Ltd.(CIO DIMENSION)
Business Connect, in a conversation with the moving spirits behind CIO Dimension, covered some interesting insights behind the multi-faceted organization for the edition of “Startup of the Year.”
Let’s do a quick round-up of the facts and faces behind CIO Dimension:
HARINDER RANA – Founder & Managing Director – Harinder Rana is a well-known business leader with enormous industry acumen and relevant expertise in experiential marketing, cutting across domains such as IT, automotive and consumer durables. Harinder is the founder of the Fervent Group and the moving force behind CIO Dimension.
RAHUL BAHUGUNA – Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer – Rahul Bahuguna is a seasoned strategy management professional who’s helmed managerial positions in several reputed organizations. He possesses extensive experience and expertise in digital marketing with a focus on Telcos, Internet, FMCG, Airlines and IT, having played stellar innings earlier on with WebChutney, JuxtConsult, Ibibo Group & Digivaasi.
NEELESH KUMAR RASTOGI – Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer – Neelesh Kumar Rastogi is a strategy and business leader with rich experience and expertise in driving transformation across the IT and Telco sector in India. Neelesh is responsible for all strategic engagement, partnerships, and alliances of CIO Dimension – apart from developing overall strategic direction for Fervent Digital. Prior to being onboard Fervent, Neelesh worked with several reputed IT firms such as Microsoft, Reliance Communications, APC by Schneider and HCL Infosystems.
KALIKA HOOJA – Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer – Kalika Hooja leads the creative team, possessing relevant experience and expertise in brand building, 360-degree experience of creation, campaigns, digital initiatives, and social media as well as online advertising and applications. Before igniting Fervent Digital, Kalika co-founded Fervent Marcom and Studio Rocket Design.
Please walk us through your company profile and your offerings in detail.
KH: CIO Dimension forms part of Fervent Digital – a technology+marcom hive-off from the main Fervent Group – an integrated experiential services company, offering exceptional creative and digital solutions as well. Fervent Group was incepted in 2010, while CIO Dimension has completed a month of its existence.
What inspired you to start this venture?
HSR: Our North Star has been the challenging yet achievable dream of our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, who outlined his vision of making India a five-trillion-dollar economy by 2024, of which one trillion dollars alone is aimed to be from the digital ecosystem.
The current advance-tech ecosystem has two main entities. On the one hand, there are startups who are working at the granular level to come up with tech-enabled solutions in these domains. The other end of the spectrum has the corporates with potential use cases for implementing such advance-tech solutions for creating disruption and never-before efficiency, in their business processes.
This is the vacuum that CIO Dimension seeks to fill – spanning the gaps to generate revenues that are not just incremental – but phenomenal. To accelerate technology disruption – and thereby create innovation by enabling smart and relevant conversations.
What gives you an edge over your peers and how is your company different from others in the same space? Please mention some of your strengths.
RB: We, at CIO Dimension, believe that India can and will create prosperity for its 1.35 billion citizens by transforming the way the economy creates value and will be driven by product & technology innovations across various industry sectors.
As part of our core philosophy, CIO Dimension aims to:
- Accelerate technology disruption by empowering smart and relevant conversations.
- Enable technocrats and businesses to make technology implementation easier for maximized productivity and efficiency.
- Power the engine of our profitability by getting the right mix of information, people and technology in the right place and having done that —to tell the truth well.
- Be the change agent of disruption and ensure that business, entrepreneurs, knowledge workers and society at large – are all better empowered, enabled and enriched as a result of the changes that we seek to usher.
What message would you want to give to other startups, in the entrepreneurial world?
NKR: With our experience with several clients, what we’ve seen that in most corporates, it is the CIO who prioritizes investment decisions — especially those that are about increasing value for end-customers. Digital transformation in this era of Industry 4.0 is inevitable. And even though all organizations have plans to embark on this journey, various surveys project that more than 80% are still at the planning stages and yet to start their first project!!
So, as a platform, aiming to bring both advance-tech startups and CIOs on the same page, we’d say that it is essential to keep doing disruptive work that’s ahead of its time. Kyonke “Apna Number Aayega.”
Please let us know about the achievements and milestones of the company.
HSR: Some of us had tossed around ideas as early as October 2018 with some stray thoughts of creating the start-up. Then, Rahul and I met Neelesh, but for the other startup idea. Both CIO Dimension and the other start-up (which shall materialize soon) have been in incubation as part of Fervent 2.0.
So, when some of us met this mentor—who was also a prospect —somewhere between the conclusion of the meeting and the walk to the car parking, our ideas had crystallized into the start-up. We now had definite glimmers of what we wanted to do. We then pitched the idea to our mentor and he gave us a firm two-thumbs up.
May 2019: What with the election and other urgent projects at hand, this went off-focus for a while, but never out of sight.
June 2019: Once the election results came and we heard the Prime Minister’s vision and blueprint for the five-trillion-dollar economy, there was no looking back.
August 2019: Finally, CIO Dimension saw the light of day. After months of toil, planning, burning the midnight oil and brain-storming sessions all over the NCR. And it all links back to where we began — almost five years of fulfilling a burning desire. To push ourselves to do more, to go farther than where we already were.
How do you see the future of the start-up, and what plans do you want to achieve shortly?
RB: From the 10,000 startups that we currently have in the country, the winners will be the ones who ensure disruption through advance-tech to create innovation and maintain clear blue water between them and the other players in the market.
NKR: And how soon the CIOs get to implement such advance-tech in their companies by talking to the advance-tech startups on our niche platform, will decide not just ours, but also India’s growth story. And that’s an exciting time for all of us!
LEGEND OF RESPONDENTS:
HSR: Harinder Singh Rana
RB: Rahul Bahuguna
NKR: Neelesh Kumar Rastogi
KH: Kalika Hooja
