LISTENLIGHTS- ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS AND CONTRACTORS
“Our actions should be such that, ultimately the end result of these actions should bring peace or growth or both to whomsoever we interact with.” – Kamlesh Shah, Managing Director, Listenlights Pvt. Ltd.
Listenlights Pvt. Ltd. is an electrical engineering and contracting company, headquartered in Mumbai for more than 30 years. Listenlights Pvt. Ltd. is a reputed name undertaking electrical installation jobs of commercial and industrial nature on pan India basis. Listenlights provides turnkey solutions to Clients’ requirements pertaining to Electrical Systems such as HT Switchyards, LT/HT installations,ELV services (Access Control, CCTV, PA, FA) and complete MEP services. It also has an in-house facility for manufacturing power and control panel boards at Vasai. Listenlights has branch offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.
Client Network:
Listenlights has a rich client base catering to a wide variety of sectors from banking, technology, e-commerce to conventional office space occupiers. Recently, it has expanded its horizons by adding Warehousing as a strategic vertical in order to cater to the current market needs of e-commerce giants. Listenlights’ focus on data centres is also significant keeping up pace with recent market trends.
A few of their prestigious clients are listed below
Amazon, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Uber, UBS, Northern Trust, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Air India, Motilal Oswal, Broadrige, Huntsman, Netmagic, TCS, AMDOCS, Everest Spices, IDBI Bank, Dupont, JM Finance,Vodafone, ICICI, Shoppers Stop, Nice, 3M, ADP, Yash Technologies, MCX, WeWork, Suzlon, MAERSK, CDK Global, Booking.com, Thermax, Crisil, Eaton, Hexaware, Synechron, Apple, IBM.
Achievements and Milestones
Company revenue for FY 2018-19 has reached the milestone number of 100 Crores which defines the achievement of the financial year. However, Mr.Shah says he is more excited to see the result of intangibles that they have gained over the last 3 years by investing in continuous training, mentorship and capability building of their workforce at all levels. The company has crossed a staff turnover of 160 plus employees and 750 plus own labours servingcustomers across India.
Founding Story
Mr. Kamlesh Shah was born in 1958 in a traditional Gujarati household. While at school, he excelled in physics and mathematics, which paved the way for his budding interest in engineering sciences. He finished his formal education in 1980 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. With a fresh degree in his hand, Mr. Shah joined Pan Electricals as a Site Engineer. The first hand, ground-level experience he gained at Pan Electricals proved to be an excellent initiation into the world of Electrical Contracting. Mr. Shah’s enterprising streak wouldn’t let him do just a day job. He had plans to have his own business and he thus founded Listenlights. His goal at the time was simple – to raise the bar of electrical contracting services in the market through quality workmanship.
Founder speaks: In an interaction with Business Connect, Mr. Kamlesh Shah, Managing Director of Listenlights shares insights from business to life. Here’s what he has to say.
How have you adapted yourself to the latest needs of the market?
The market has moved from focusing on customer satisfaction to customer experience. Uberization of businesses is something which is gaining momentum and that is the future according to us as well. From conventional thoughts of quality service and timely delivery, market has graduated to extremely fast-paced deliveries with enhanced customer experiences. In order to adapt to these changing market needs, more and more decentralization of processes across the organization and shifting decision centres to regionaloffices from which we operate becomes paramount. Quicker turn-arounds in our industry is the absolute key. As a result, we have developed our in-house trainedlabour strength to cater to this requirement. We also have warehouses in each region for swifter supply of material. This is backed by our robust technology based supply-chain applications.
What are the efforts made by you not to lag behind in the race of having the latest technology?
In view of changing business landscape in context to technology, we started by investing in a technology and innovation vertical within the organization 2 years back. Journey of identifying gaps was initiated across business processes and we have managed to plug them only with the help of technology applications. We have ensured technology penetration at all levels and continue to improve from the day we started. System adherence and real-time monitoringhave ensured quicker turn arounds. Mobile applications have been developed to assist our on-ground operationshelping us to squeeze project timelines.By ensuring timely deliveries, customer expectations are met and that is the biggest reason we boast of a 90 – 95% customer retention rate.
From Excel, CAD and obsolete financial systems to our homegrown web-based App, 3D modelling, clash detection tools and mobile-enabled ERP; we have come a long way. We are always keen to leverage new technologies in the market to not only drive speed and growth in projects but also simplify the life of the employees working on projects. We will continue to invest in technology as a big change driver for the next 3-5 years.
In recent times, many cutting-edge technologies such as IoT, AI, and Big Data have changed the modus operandi of business. How has it affected your company?
I repeat, technology has changed the way we are working today at Listenlights.
As I have gone through 3 big business generations during my tenure; Industrial revolution to Information revolution to Social/Digital revolution, we understand the dynamics which have changed in this age of hyper-growth, fast paced, mobile-enabled market. According to me, there are 2 parts to this question – one where customer is asking for applying these technologies to enhance their workspaces and employee experiences and second, how we’re leveraging these cutting-edge technologies to improve our service deliveries.
On the customer aspect, there have been a lot of corporates who have asked us for data based lighting systems to IoT based sensing devices. We are gearing up for such requirements by having a proactive approach and tying up with reputed OEMs for training our people. We are continuously focusing to enhance and engineer innercapabilities at Listenlights by such collaborative training workshops.
On improving our service delivery portion, I feel there’s still a considerable amount of time before we can talk of AI improving the way we work across offerings in the construction industry we operate. Yes, but as Listenlights we are working towards gathering robust data not only from our core functions but also from support functions like Human Resources, Finance, Vendor management etc. Collectively, we plan to run an analytics layer possibly by Q2 in FY 2020post which we shall start running AI engines to make better decisions internally. Once we’re confident of our decisions, we shall start rolling out customer-centric AI based applications to improve our service deliveries and client experience.
It is very clear within our organization that we need to move away from conventional service deliveries and focus on enhancing customer experiences wherever we operate in this social/digital age. We can say we have taken significant steps in the overall journey of going completely digital. As Listenlights, we plan to invest in areas of BIM in order to bring 3D Technology’s efficiencies to ground level operations.I truly believe that ‘Change is the only constant’, one must be dynamic and willing to make changes from time to time to stay ahead of the competition.
What was your learning during struggling days?
The downtimes are the best and one should utilize them to the optimum, as that allows you to focus on priorities, reduce wastage, enhance technical knowledge and get ready for new set of challenges one might face in the future.
How do you ensure the unbreakable faith of clients in your company?
In my personal life, I have always followed certain basic principles, eventually, those have become my Organization’s 6 Spiritual Foundations:
- To be always available for the client and especially when he needs us the most.
- No compromise with the agreed specifications and quality.
- No deviation in timelines committed to client.
- Solution driven approach.
- Doing the right thing even when nobody’s watching.
- Human Approach with everyone.
These Spiritual Foundations are the pillars of our organization. They havehelped the organization reach its current capacities& we shall continue to stay true to them to scale-up manifoldin times to come.