"IF I look back at my career, I think I was an entrepreneur from the beginning," says Dinesh Sharma, president and chief executive officer of DNR Process Solutions.
A big part of being an entrepreneur - as Mr Sharma defines it - is independence. After all, the need for independence was what drove him to start his own business.
Mr Sharma, who hails from India, used to be managing director of a Swiss-German company in the same industry as DNR. But after a management change at that company, he found himself facing various administrative constraints. So in early 2002, he decided to go it alone.
"Basically it was the urge to continue to do things independently," he says. Founding DNR gave him the freedom and independence to do what he wanted - and to ensure that he could give customers the best.
What DNR actually does is help customers manage their operations, providing "the link between automation and enterprise". In other words, it integrates enterprise resource planning - which involves data and processes - with manufacturing execution systems, which are used to measure and control operations.
Information from sensors and instruments, for instance, is relayed from the plant to the business in real time. And DNR's solutions extend beyond real-time monitoring to include information tracking and long-term key performance indicator reports.
"When I started this company we thought of going outside Singapore," says Mr Sharma. But at an early stage, the company changed its focus to Singapore instead. DNR has secured contracts with companies such as SembCorp, Keppel and Chemoil.
The company's first big deal involved the Changi Water Reclamation Plant, part of Singapore's deep tunnel sewerage system project. There were seven or eight large contracts for the plant, explains Mr Sharma, with several sub-contracts to each large one.
DNR received enquiries from engineering, procurement and construction companies that were searching for partners. But when it spoke to main contractor SembCorp, the latter suggested that DNR go for the whole project on a turnkey basis instead of restricting itself to certain aspects.
The suggestion got Mr Sharma thinking. Even before the contract was secured, he sent two of his engineers to England to be certified, in preparation. DNR eventually beat other companies - including international ones - to be awarded the contract by SembCorp.
"Before I did this, I even asked some of the major instrumentation companies whether we could make an alliance and work together," says Mr Sharma. "But most of these companies were interested in selling hardware, not taking responsibility for the whole project."
SembCorp later awarded DNR two more contracts for different parts of the Changi Water Reclamation Plant.
But Mr Sharma is quick to add that DNR still believes in alliances, and mentions a contract that was secured in partnership with a major Japanese instrumentation company, which had invited DNR to an alliance.
Yet being a small company in this industry is not easy, and forming alliances is not always the answer. "I think one of the key challenges for us was to develop resources," says Mr Sharma. Specifically, human resources: people with the right technical skills.
To that end, DNR started a school attachment programme with Nanyang Technological University in 2004 and is working with the Institute of Systems Science at the National University of Singapore. The attachment seems to have paid off: two students from NTU have since joined DNR as engineers.
DNR's team shows that nationality is no barrier to recruitment. The 21 engineers in DNR are from seven different countries: Singapore, India, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines.
And though DNR is now focused on the Singapore market, it does not rule out going overseas. Says Mr Sharma: "We are already carrying out projects overseas, but those are usually through engineering companies."
One overseas project is a tank farm management system in China, which features DNR's first developed product, the Poims tank farm inventory management system for edible oils.
"Now we are looking at bringing this business model outside Singapore," says Mr Sharma, who hopes to take DNR to one or two other countries within a year.
The company's latest product development work is, again, for the Changi Water Reclamation Plant.
In late 2005 the project needed software that could monitor 10,000 field devices which measured waterflow, pressure and temperature.
With the help of Spring Singapore and a German partner that worked with DNR on co-technology, DNR developed a device type management program for that purpose. The software is now undergoing field tests at Changi.
"We have to have a differentiator," says Mr Sharma. And developing its own products, such as the new software, is one way for DNR to set itself apart.
