NEW DELHI: There’s the politically correct answer, and then there’s a more realistic one,” jokes Dr Christopher Richard, Founder, G7CR, when asked how he got into data computing and business intelligence. Still chuckling, he notes, “The politically correct response is that I love analytics of any kind, and this is where my passion took me. The more accurate sentiment would be that I followed the money.”
The Bengaluru-based IT consultant is taking his business to Delhi and beyond this year, with 25 branch offices set to open across India this year.
The son of a single mother who taught in primary school, Richard has been through the rigmarole of poverty.
“I lost my dad at a very young age, and my mom was a primary school teacher, so trying to earn money was always a driving force. For me, it was about moving out of the lower middle class, so I took on any job I could during school. From part-timing at mills to ice-cream parlours, I even moonlighted as a security guard at an apartment building in my town,” says the 43-year-old entrepreneur, who dropped out of formal education after Class 12.
Richard has since gone on to become a leading IT consultant in the Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics space, which involves data management solutions used by companies to collect historical and current data to make better business decisions for their digital security. Within three years of his company – G7CR – entering the cloud computing business, it has crossed the Rs 100 crore mark and has been honoured with Microsoft Partner of the Year Award for the year 2019.
It’s been quite a journey from looking out for people who’d break into households to unknown individuals who could potentially loot entire countries. “A Spanish university was kind enough to give me an honorary doctorate a couple of years ago, so I’ve been adding Dr into the mix ever since,” says Richard.
“These full-page ads from the IT industry would come saying that they’d provide us recent graduates with a three-month training, following which we’d find assured employment”, recalls Richard, harking back to the 1980s. As someone who didn’t even have a nodding, er, clicking acquaintance with computers, he was starting from scratch.
“I got married early, and it was my wife who actually pawned one of her bangles so that I could afford to take this basic three-month course in computing.”
While the course gave Richard exposure to computer programming, he didn’t get the job. But it taught him the basics and that was enough.
“I’m a voracious reader, so I would pick up three books about the same technology by three different authors, and read all of them. Because I had the fundamentals in order, I could grasp what they were saying and then learn further,” recalls Richard.
One of his first projects was with Dominos Pizza in India, and even as he delivered his service right on time, Richard and his nascent team learned on the job. Today, G7CR employs around 1,000 employees and is hungry for more assignments. Talk about a Domino effect.