Tanveer Patel is founder of Azikewe Systems US and Director of Azikewe Systems India. Azikewe offers offshore Information Technology (IT) software development to its clients who are located in US, UK and India. Tanveer Patel had 8 years of industry experience prior to founding Azikewe including a stint as a General Manager of Sales and Marketing at MicroLan Solutions. She is known for her expertise in product development, sales, marketing and has ensured unmatched service levels to her clients. A graduate in Computer Science, Tanveer has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.

Tanveer spoke about the challenges of leading an enterprise through its start-up and growth phases. She began by saying that she always wanted to be her own boss. Her passion and will to succeed in business was driven by a determination to prove that women could manage business enterprises very well too.

She decided to launch her entrepreneurial career by leveraging the skills acquired through her specialised education and the experience she had gained in working with the IT industry. Her prior knowledge and deep understanding of the IT industry and its dynamics helped her realise that the opportunity was ripe for outsourced IT services. She decided to exploit the opportunity by founding Azikewe to provide offshore software development services to clients. She said that recognising and exploiting the right opportunity was the key to the company’s success. Finding the right funding support was made easy by the fact that Tanveer was eligible for support from the State of Minnesota as a woman entrepreneur.

Tanveer believes in investing in talent and in keeping a strict control on overhead expenses. The company initially took up small pilot projects to build good references and to create an inventory of good practices. This led to a build up of customer confidence and the business of the company grew. In addition, Tanveer made it a point to attend seminars and functions organised by the local industry and government agencies. These events were used to network and build excellent contacts that in turn led to further business.

Meanwhile, it became obvious that the opportunity in the market was huge. In order to prepare Azikewe to take advantage of this large and emerging market, Tanveer decided that the company would build expertise in select areas and technologies with excellent potential for growth such as wireless technology, dot.net and java.

As business grew, Tanveer focused the company on building capability in project execution and operations management. Her belief in investing in quality talent stood the company in good stead. The company built a team that brought in strong project management and process certification skills. In addition, the team had the ability to understand customer requirements well and also communicated with each other effectively. This helped Azikewe avoid the usual pitfall of a technology start-up – poor execution.

She concluded by saying that she was now looking forward to the challenges of steering the company through an exciting growth phase. On being asked about the key to entrepreneurial success, she identified passion as crucial.