Ghana IT: IPMC – Intercom Programming and Manufacturing Company

Interview with Amar Deep S. Hari, CEO of IPMC (Intercom Programming & Manufacturing Company)

You have the experience of a foreigner, coming here to Ghana to set up a business. What have you found that is good and what did you find difficult when you came? What is the outlook now in 2013 of the economic situation of Ghana for a business company in commerce?

My biggest experience in Ghana, which has been different from other African countries where I have been during my business career, has been Ghana’s people. When I first arrived in Ghana 22 years back, one very famous technocrat of those times met me in one of the hotels and he said, “Amar, welcome to Ghana. I would like to tell you something very special about this country, and if you want to do something in this country you must keep that in mind”. I said, “Sir, what is that? “. He said, “It’s the people of Ghana, they are intelligent, they are intellectuals, you will be very successful at any business that you want to do here which challenges their intellect”.

Since that time, no looking back, I started my IT business based on this knowledge, and today because of this particular fact, IPMC, my company, is one of West Africa’s largest IT companies employing over 600 people, spread over 20 locations and serving even the neighbouring countries, whether it’s Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast or Nigeria.

The main experience of my being in Ghana has been the wonderful dealings which I have had with the local population. A few years back, I got an opportunity to sponsor a poor child from a remote village, and in that village, at that time, over 20 years back, there wasn’t even electricity. So his principal came to me and told me, “This boy is very intelligent, but he doesn’t have the funds to continue his studies”. I said, “Don’t worry, I will experiment. I will fund his education”. After he finished his school in the village, he came to Accra and he did higher studies in our IT Training Institute, after that he worked in our service centre, got some good experience. Since that time, this boy worked for one of the largest gold mining companies which are present in Ghana, Newmont. He worked for one of the largest Telcos in the world, Airtel. And today he is placed in one of the largest IT companies in the world, guess which one, IBM. And the boy has such humble beginnings, I mean from a simple village without any electricity.

One of my very first drivers, when he joined me, while talking to him, I found out that he was very good in numbers. We had about 100 vehicles in our company and he would remember each vehicle by its number, not by the make, not by the brand, not by the driver, but he would remember the vehicle by its number. So we made him the transport manager and he turned out to be one of our best transport managers. Anytime you call him he says, “Sir, vehicle number so and so, this is the problem”. Today, he rides home a four-wheel drive; and is one of our senior managers in the company. His son, again, the whole family comes from a very poor background, so he didn’t even have enough money to pay for the education of his son, but his son would score “A” grades in every subject. So we have been sponsoring his education for the last few years, and I know that this boy will turn out to be one of the upcoming intellectuals of this nation.

Just last week, I was interviewing another person for a job in my company and he is one of the ex-graduates of IPMC IT Training center. Whatever questions I would ask him about computers, before my question ended he would provide me with the correct technical answer, and some of the questions were technically very difficult. After I finished the interview, inquisitively I asked “Tell me something about your background”. He said, “Sir, I don’t want to mention this, but I used to paint houses about 5 years back, after that I started selling spare parts in some vehicle market here until I saw your IPMC advert and I got inspired with the IT message you were sending”. Today, he is one of our best candidates, who we are sponsoring for higher education.

What I am stressing here is that talent in Ghana resides in every other place. They say Ghana is rich in gold, wherever you dig up, you will find gold, but I say that Ghana is rich in intellect. If you have to look at this country, we may not say that the per capita income is good for the country, but I can say that the per capita intellect is one of the best anywhere you will find in the world.

If you look at the IT industry what is the next step for Ghana to become India? To become a base to support development, with people that are well-trained and well-educated in IT, and that will be able to develop software. What is the process, what is your vision on that?

What I can say about this is that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If India has reached some place in software applications or software development, it’s not that other countries, upcoming countries like Ghana, should do everything that India did, but we need to do something different and something different is wherever India is standing today, countries like Ghana should start from there and leapfrog. One of the areas, for example, is the mobile apps, the whole world today is a virgin market for mobile apps and these mobile apps have started mushrooming in Ghana. So many companies have started coming up and they have started making very nice mobile apps which are very much suitable to this country and to this region. These mobile apps are not for this region alone, but you can use some of those mobile apps internationally, in other places as well. I see Ghana to be leading as a country where we will have lots of mobile app development.

How do you see your company in this sector and in terms of development? Where do you come in, what is your contribution and what are your skills?

From the very beginning of this company, 22 years back, IPMC has been in the forefront of creating enabling environments where IT can flourish. When it comes to making available the latest technology products to the market, you may be aware that IPMC is one of the largest distributors of international IT brands, whether it is: HP, Dell, EMC, Cisco, Microsoft, you name it, any latest technology product, even Apple, you will find it at any of the IPMC retail outlets. We have taken it as our company’s motto to ensure that availability of IT products is made very convenient to the masses. Firstly, the product should be available locally as soon as it is released in the world market. Secondly, the price should be affordable to the local users.

The other challenge is how to use that technology product, and that brings us to the training aspect, which we also ensure whenever we bring any technology, or whenever we develop a new software product, a lot of trainings get imparted for the same. Software development now is taking place locally through Ghanaian software experts on a large scale, whether it’s the upcoming project of the 26 ministries or 102 government agencies where IPMC is undertaking the office automation work, all resources being used, or the majority of resources being used are Ghanaians.

We’ve also embarked upon an E-Health program on behalf of the government. About three major hospitals have been picked up in the country for this particular automation. Again, it’s the Ghanaian IT professionals who are in the forefront. So creating this enabling environment where technology products are available off the shelf, where there is know-how of how to make an optimum use of them, developing software for these technology products and ensuring that IT projects are implemented successfully is what our company, IPMC, is about.

How do you act in your competitive environment? What is your competitor like? Do you have any competitors?

I would say all of the competitors in Ghana, are actually complementing each other. Just one company can never satisfy all the requirements of IT products, services, solutions or IT training. The demand is huge, it’s over 25 million people, and all of those people need to have the latest IT products, all of those people need to have access to software applications, all of those people need to have the know-how of IT and the knowledge about IT. There are about 500 IT companies in Ghana right now. It is not possible for this small number of companies to look after the entire Ghana market. So there is a huge scope for the competition in the country.

Of course, competition will be there in every field, but once your product is good, once your service is good, then there is no competition for that particular vendor. Most of the Ghanaian IT companies are able to distinguish themselves, they are able to differentiate themselves with good quality service or good quality products, which they are taking to the market and each one of them is trying to make a niche, trying to make a name, trying to create a differentiation from the other. This is where they come and complement each other and present a bouquet of various IT products and solutions to that final customer who is in need of all of those products and solutions.

If there are international companies that come and want to do the same projects, basically sell the same products and services as you, can they do this or not? How are you with international competition coming here? Is it possible?

The international players in the IT segment, most of them, whether it’s HP services, IBM services, Dell services or software application providers from India like Iflex, Infosys and Infrasoft Tech Solutions, all these global IT players have their presence in Ghana and each one of them is able to get good business. The Ghanaian capacity, the hunger for IT is a lot. In all the businesses where IPMC provides services, in all the households or other end users, everybody loves IT in Ghana and everybody wants to be surrounded by technology. Thus as many numbers of IT player which are entering into Ghana, they are able to have their market, secure their market and be a profitable venture once they open up here.

You are in products, in training, in projects, how do you see the development of the company now? Where do you want to position the company next time?

For us, the entire IT portfolio is a very vast area. There are numerous IT products we are trying to specialize in, as many of them as possible. Similarly in IT solutions, there are so many types of IT solutions and IT applications, it is not possible for one company to do them all. We try to do as much keep on adding more and more software solutions and products as possible, thereby growing the company’s size, growing the number of people we employ, growing our turnovers. As far as IT is concerned, it’s an unlimited landscape and any company can grow as much as possible.

And in this case what is your challenge in developing the company? What are your main challenges?

The challenge in developing countries like Ghana is always access to capital. The interest rates in our part of the world are still very high and we are hoping that financial reforms, which are being implemented, will ease things out somehow. This limited access to capital doesn’t allow us to grow at a faster pace, or as fast as we could have as compared to a developed country.

What about having an international partner coming in, having access to the international market where the interest rate is much lower? Is it something that you are interested in?

Lower interest rates in other places of the world, and any businesses which are set up over there coming to countries such as Ghana, where interest rates are higher and making their access to capital available by getting into partnerships, has actually been working very well. We almost have 15 partners or suppliers looking after IPMC, and all of them are supporting us with multi-million dollar credit lines and we really get a lot of assistance through such a business model. Other IT companies in Ghana need similar assistance as well. So imagine 500 companies sitting in Ghana and all of them get 10 or 20 partnerships each, so there is a huge scope for partnerships with foreign companies who have cheaper access to capital.

So that solves the problem. You don’t need to have a reform. In a way, access to capital is there, yes?

Always in any economy it is the private sector, which is the key player and which brings about the success in the economies.

So what is your main challenge, in this case, because this is not a challenge, is it?

It is not a challenge, but again, the challenge happens because you have taken the credit from cheaper capital markets, but then if the currency devaluation in our country is not stable and it’s unpredictable, the risk becomes higher. Then it matters. Of course, Ghana in the past years has been relatively stable as far as devaluation is concerned, but still there is always the risk that you never know when soft economies get affected by the turmoil happening in other parts of the world.

What is your dream for the company in the next five years?

My dream for the company is that we are doing very well in IT, and we are very happy and satisfied about that. I would like to achieve similar success in agriculture, that’s what we are embarking upon right now. Ghana is the next destination for agriculture and that is also for organic farming. So this is where we are starting our new business beginning this year and we are hoping that in the next four-five years we really become strong at it.

Can you tell more about it? It’s interesting because it’s an example that is different, coming from IT and going to agriculture. Do you have a brand? What are you going to be producing?

One of our sister companies is into rice distribution and sugar commodities and most of these products are hugely being imported from abroad, whereas vast agricultural lands are available which can be cultivated. So we want to use our distribution arm where we are already well established to start getting the produce locally in place of importing it from abroad. These days from all of the other markets you get mostly inorganic products, but Africa is a place where you can start having organic farming easily. Here we can really start a good way of agriculture which is currently missing from other parts of the world, of course people are attempting this in other places as well, but in Africa and in Ghana it is easier to do, because most of the land is free of pesticides. Some of the land which has never been cultivated can have organic farming from the very beginning and maintained subsequently. I am passionate about building brands, this is what I did about IPMC, started locally in a small way and have now built it into a known international brand. It is my dream to build a similar brand in organic farming products from this country starting from next year onwards.

What a different field!

It’s a different field, but that’s where I come from. I come from a farmer family in India. Our roots are farming in Punjab, that is what the Sikhs do, they are farmers and the state of Punjab in spite of being two per cent of the population of India produces 60% of the grain.