BEING an entrepreneur should be a fine mix of inherited and learned ability, says Mr Amit Sujan, chief executive officer and founder of Itcan, a firm that provides information technology consultancy services to various organisations in Asia.

He adds: 'To succeed, an entrepreneur should have a good understanding of his genetic and natural abilities and limitations and the ability to constantly learn, unlearn, re-learn and evolve.'

Mr Sujan, 36, who is a member of the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sicci) set up his company six years ago, tapping into the booming IT services.

He has 400 employees in Singapore and his client list includes Fortune 500 firms, multi-national corporations and banks in Asia.

'Because every business depends on IT, it is one of the fields that has a continuous opportunity to keep learning. It is evolving so fast that by the time you learn something, it has become obsolete,' adds Mr Sujan, who started his career in sales and marketing.

Prior to striking out on his own, he worked for 13 years with various banks and major IT corporations like NIIT in India and JP Morgan and IBM in Singapore. During his time with these companies, he won several awards like NIIT's Star Performer Award and IBM's Bravo Award.

'With each job, as my roles changed, an avenue opened for me to learn new and different things and made me aware of all the different functions of an organisation which include sales, marketing, operational, technical as well as people management,' he says.

One of his major challenges was convincing clients that he and his team could get the job done better than the big guys in the industry.

'We always have to answer this question, why choose Itcan when there are 10 or 15 other companies providing same solutions, and we would say, if you don't try something new, you won't know the difference,' reveals Mr Sujan.

'The first order we received was over $2,000, but we were happy because that gave us an opportunity to prove ourselves. Now we have $10 million worth of business from the same client. Our philosophy is that if you cannot take care of your customer, somebody else will.

'No matter how big we get, no matter what kind of percentage revenue we are getting from the clients, we have to ensure that we are providing them with better quality service each time.'

As a result, Itcan and Mr Sujan have received many awards like the Sicci-DBS Singapore Indian Entrepreneur Award in 2008 as well as the Enterprise50 and Shell LiveWire awards in 2007.

And his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: 'No risk, no gain... we need to take calculated risks and be confident of ourselves, the journey is tough but the destination is worth it.'

Sheela Narayanan

This series is brought to you by the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry