Darts IT Networks : Believing In Quality Over Quantity

His biggest strength and weakness lies in his work ethics and principles.
Gupta has his eyes set on offshore business opportunities after having a
significant presence inthe networking business in India

Life has been indeed very eventful for Arun Gupta, MD and Founder of Darts IT
Networks. He likes to do things in an unconventional manner but cares about the
society at the same time. After passing out of Delhi College of Engineering (DCE)
in 1985, Arun spent the next two years in Larsen & Toubro. But soon he realized,
the job that he was doing was helping only his cause and not the society as a
whole. Therefore, he decided to sit for the UPSC exam which he cleared in the
year 1989. The civil services exam provided him an opportunity to work with the
Indian Railways, which meant he could serve people now. "I worked for the Indian
Railways for 11 straight years and I can safely say it was the most challenging
phase of my life so far," said Gupta. However, during his stint with the
railways, he played a crucial role in the construction of the Ajmeri Gate side
of the New Delhi Railway Station, which now helps thousands of passengers
everyday. But he left the job in September 2000 as the politics inside railways
got the better of him.

Now was the time for him to re-enter into the technology arena and this time
he chose IT. He started his IT career as being the co-owner of Integrix, a
solution provider and later founded Darts IT in 2005. And since then, there has
been no looking back as far as the growth of Darts is concerned. To list some of
the company's achievements so far, Darts became the first Cisco SMB Specialized
Partner in India in 2007. It also won a quiz organized by Cisco, 'The Technobiz
Mastermind' in 2006, which enabled them to showcase their networking knowledge
all across the country. Currently, Darts is India's one of the leading IT
networking companies. As far as the work of the company is concerned, they are
into designing, installing, supporting and maintaining IT networks for
organizations in the country. The company also focuses on serving quality
customers and their association with Samsung for almost six years now is a
testimony to that. Headquartered in New Delhi, the company also has branch
offices in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.

Yes, there were times when Gupta was finding it tough to run his networking
business. He recollected, "When I started my IT career in 2000, the networking
industry was very small and the dot com bubble that burst a few years ago had
left the technology sector in a tough situation. I had almost thought of
shutting down the business and start looking for a job. Luckily for me and Dart
IT Networks, we got a big order which saved us from calling it quits."

Now a fundamental question arises, what makes Gupta the successful person
that he is today? What are his strengths and weaknesses? To all of these, he
humbly pointed out, "The work ethics that I have adopted till now is responsible
for whatever I have achieved in life today. And I will continue to do good work
with the same ethics in the future as well. Sadly, there have been a number of
instances in the past where we did not get orders from corporates because they
wanted me to work against my principles and ethics. So in a way, the strong
ethics part in me and the ability to stick to this path for so long makes it
both my biggest strengths and weaknesses." He further added, "My ethics are my
biggest weakness primarily because of the fact that it doesn't allow me to sell
at times. But as I said earlier, I am someone who always believes in quality
over quantity."

Talking about, the other side of Gupta, he has some really interesting
hobbies and whenever he finds time for it, he makes sure he doesn't miss out on
them. What he relishes the most in his free time is giving IQ tests on the Web.
"It is my favorite hobby. During my engineering days, I used to ace all the
quizzes that used to take place in college," he fondly recalled. Another thing
he can't help talking about is his love for movies. During his college days and
till now, he can hardly remember even a single instance where he missed out on a
chance to watch any of his favorite movies. He went down the memory lane and
said ,"It is hard to believe, but during my DCE days, I used to watch at least
two movies on a weekly basis. Though now I cannot take much time off, but I try
catching up on the masala bollywood front whenever I can." Besides being an avid
reader, Gupta also manages to take out time for yoga every morning.

When asked about Darts IT's plans for the year 2010, he pointed out, "After
having a significant presence in the networking business here in India, we now
have our eyes set on offshore business opportunities including the possibility
of an international location."

Bharat Sharma

bharats@cybermedia.co.in