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Harinder Salwan : The Multimedia Connection

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Minakshi
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Born and brought up in Lonavala in 1963, Harinder Salwan migrated to Mumbai in 1974. Salwan completed his schooling from Mumbai, and graduation in Electronics and Communication from REC Kurukshetra College in Haryana. Further he completed his MBA in Marketing and Management from KC College, Mumbai in 1988.

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The Journey Begins

Taking his first step into business, Salwan started part time job with Accutrol Systems, better known as Honeywell India in 1986. "My job profile in Honeywell included selling process control instruments," added Salwan. After Honeywell, it was time for Salwan to look for a change in his profile and he went ahead and chose to sell computers and terminals with Indchem Electronics in 1987.

Looking for a better growth profile, Salwan left Indchem and joined Datamatics Consultants in the software development space and dedicated two years to the organization from 1988 to 1990. It is truly said that success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. Salwan yet again quit his job at Datamatics and joined the Kirloskar group in 1990. "Working with Kirloskar was a great experience like other companies, and I used to work for their marketing operations in Mumbai for consecutively five years," he said.

The interesting part is that Salwan was a partner in Trident Communications setup in 1991, while working with Kirloskar and used to promote the concept of multimedia. He was involved in launching brands like Creative, Aztech, Multiwave, Aver and technologies like VCD and DVD in the Indian market. "All these launches paved the way for me to receive the title of ‘The Multimedia Man' in the year 1996 from a reputed industry magazine Dataquest," said a proud Salwan. But sadly due to some personal reasons, the partnership had to come to an end and so did business for Trident Communications. Later he also quit Kirloskar.

The Tricom Group was finally born in 1994 with Tricom Multimedia as their first company consequent to the closure of Trident Communi­cations. "To focus on the developing market of multimedia software, Tricom International was born as a consequence to the reorganization of Tricom Multimedia which was marketing the multimedia hardware and software in the western region of India since 1994. During the first five years of opera­tions, we started from Margoa, Belgaum, Delhi, Vapi and Hyderabad with representative offices in Delhi and Hyderabad," added Salwan.

Salwan managed to spread the company's wings across the country and grew sub­stan­tially. He managed the busi­ness at both Tricom Multimedia and Tricom International. While Tricom Multi­media dealt completely with the hardware market, Tricom International had a soft­ware side to it. However, last year Salwan shut down both the compa­nies and floated Tricom Multimedia Pvt Ltd, which is known as the integration of both the compa­nies. "We launched Tricom Multimedia Pvt Ltd to drive the software business to a new level and diver­sify into Green field technologies," said Salwan.

Salwan has also been equally involved in promoting Green products, e-waste manage­ment and the latest double taxation issue which ISODA has been fighting for many years now. "Until now, ISODA had been seeking clarity from the government on the double taxation confusion. But now with the notification from the Ministry of Finance, dated December 21, 2010 which states that the channel community has to pay either the customs duty and excise duty at the first stage of import or the service tax at the later stage; the channel community will now have to mention about the same to the government and also ensure that customers are not charged more," said Salwan.

Talking about e-waste management, Salwan mentioned that e-waste is a major environment problem, globally and in the Third World countries like India. There is not much attention paid to it neither by customers, dealers nor by the government. Most SPs are not aware of the concept of e-waste management and how it has to be handled primarily because we still depend upon the road-side kabadiwala to take away the broken or condemned electronic waste.

Challenging the Challenges

With so many up-downs in Salwan's profes­sional life, it surely must be a challenge for him to gather all the strength and wake up to a new venture all together. "Being the first generation business man in my family, I am happy with the kind of success I have achieved in my life. My wife has always stood with me and has been equally supportive and coping through my hectic lifestyle. The reason behind our success is that we enjoy the work that we do and we have always thrived to take our business to the next level. My approach towards work is to remain dedicated and sincere and would always strive to put in my best efforts. I am very passionate about my work and it always gives me a high. I believe success always come with hard work and honesty," asserted Salwan.

The Outlook

Salwan believes that a healthy bottomline is the flavor of the company's success. He is one of the few guys who believe in ethical business and stick to customers' commitments. And that is why he has always consolidated on the technology front and kept himself abreast with the technological advancements. With his ability to sustain values and work as an honest entrepreneur, Salwan has remained quite loyal and dedicated towards its customers, and has also been able to provide best of the possible solutions to them. For him, every challenge is an opportunity to grow. His family has been the pillar of strength throughout this journey. "They have always encouraged me in every situation and never complained about my absence from home. They have a pivotal role in my career as well," said Salwan.

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