Phaneesh Murthy
Tech

Phaneesh Murthy: Re-Engineering Tech Companies with Tech/Ops Convergence

Phaneesh Murthy is the Founder and CEO of Primentor. He has been working in the tech industry for nearly four decades. During this time, Murthy has built expertise in Global Technology & Business Services. Currently, he mentors entrepreneurs to help them generate multiplied value for tech companies that they have created. 

Murthy’s Start in the Tech Industry

Murthy graduated from IIT, India with a degree in mechanical engineering, and later an MBA from IIM, India. Shortly after, he started working at Sonata Software, where he helped the company reach break even. Five years later, Murthy made the move to Infosys Ltd. He worked there from 1992  to 2002, as the Global Head of Sales and Member of the Board of Directors and the company’s revenues reached  $700 million under his leadership. He later founded a startup called Quintant Services, which was merged with iGate, and he was the CEO. 

At iGate, Murthy was instrumental in restructuring the company and helped it acquire Patni Systems, a company much bigger than iGate at the time. This made iGate a Tier 1 company. Taking the company from almost zero to an Enterprise Value of $4.8 billion in 10 years. 

Primentor: Idea and Mission

Realizing that he had created enormous value for two companies during his career, he decided to use that experience and coach upcoming entrepreneurs. And so he founded Primentor in 2013. Murthy says that the primary goal for starting Primentor was to, “Mentor senior executives of large organizations and entrepreneurs to create shareholder value by enhancing business agility in an uncertain environment.

Murthy focuses on the smaller company segment, that is companies with revenues between $60 million to $1 billion. Within this range, Murthy prefers to work with companies in the $60 – $250 million range because he believes that at this level, it is very easy to generate great value very quickly with good mentoring.

At any given time, Primentor works with 3 to 5 companies, and during this time, these companies are essentially “re-engineered”. 

Tech/Ops Convergence

One of the key methods employed by Phaneesh Murthy is Tech/Ops Convergence. In his experience, senior leadership tends to silo technology and operations. This siloed view of the two related components results in value leakages. This is because while the leadership may have clarity about the technology and operations, they are unable to ascribe a business value to this overall dollar outflow. 

According to Murthy, the solution to this problem is having a single integrated view of technology and operations. This is where the vast experience of Primentor’s leadership team comes in handy, as it has structured and managed more than 500 tech-ops deals. His clients get a business model that is backed by data, complete with a consultative guide. The entire process can be broken down into three simple steps. 

First, Primentor assesses the current state of the company. This step includes a holistic evaluation, using proprietary benchmarking and gap analysis. Second, Primentor comes up with an operational model design. This model prioritizes design and cost efficiencies. This is achieved by re-engineering and automating the operations, and by restructuring teams. Third, companies are provided support through a dedicated program management office, to ensure that the operational changes are implemented seamlessly.