Terrence Sukhu is an engaging 29-year-old businessman who is aiming to take his company, Digital Technology, to the very top of the pile in the local information technology sector and, he said, he is prepared to “work hard” to get there.
Sukhu’s approximately $100 million business has become one of the standouts in a sector that is still dominated by small players. The three-storey building that houses the company is among the prominent edifices in Diamond, across the road from the clutch of commercial banks that have set up shop in the area and not far from where he grew up in Grove. The ceremony to mark the opening of the new building last week was a landmark for a company, which, Sukhu said, he has been building since 2003.
Sukhu’s involvement with the IT sector began during his tenure as a laboratory assistant at the University of Guyana’s IT laboratory. He said when local suppliers were unable to meet the requirements of people connected with IT at Turkeyen, he entered the market, facilitating small imports based on individual orders. The business, he said, really started with a $90,000 advance from a customer to import a laptop computer.
Prior to that, Sukhu, an old boy of Christ Church Secondary School and the son of parents who worked for the sugar estate at Diamond, had been a refrigeration technician. It was his mother, he said, who had encouraged him to accept a scholarship in 2005 to study Networking Technologies in India.
Digital Technologies is a family business, its three directors being Sukhu, his wife Sabrina and his brother James. Sabrina is also the company’s Chief Financial Officer. One of three authorized dealers for the IT company Dell, Digital Techno-logy also represents Micro-soft locally.
Sukhu makes no secret of the fact that the rise of Digital Technology to what it is today is, in large measure, attributable the company’s winning of lucrative state tenders for the importation of IT-related equipment and accessories. He, however, dismisses suggestions that any of this was due either to ‘political godfatherism’ or the manipulation of the tender process. “We studied the requirements of the tenders, submitted competitive bids and won some of them,” he said. “In fact, there were quite a few other lucrative tenders which we lost when, in my view, we were also very competitive. We have no inside track on the tender process.”
Last year, however, the image of Digital Technology hit a huge hurdle. Queries were raised in sections of the media about the company being awarded a tender to supply $222.9 million worth of computers and accessories to 64 state schools. The transaction became caught up in the slipstream of corruption allegations directed at government and government officials. Queries were raised about the bona fides of Digital Technology and allegations were rife that the company had been the beneficiary of a ‘sweetheart deal’ personally engineered by the then minister of education Shaik Baksh.
Sukhu spoke about the episode without any hint of evasiveness. He said the media got it all wrong. The New York building – which came to be referred to as the barber shop – had been used by his company to consolidate shipments for Georgetown; that and nothing more. Besides, he said, the computers acquired for the Ministry of Education never went anywhere near that building nor, he insisted, did he even know Baksh before his company was awarded the tender.
The episode hurt Digital Technology. “Yes, the business has been affected. There are people who do not want to linked to a company that has acquired that kind of publicity,” Sukhu said.
The question regarding the impact of the scandal on Digital Technology’s image returned Sukhu to what he said is the focus of his company on making a mark in the local IT industry. When asked about considerations of competition in the context of such a sizeable investment in what is an already crowded sector, Sukhu said Digital Technology’s marketing strategy has taken account of the competition.
“We are not necessarily making the sale of computers our only priority,” he said. “We are interested in equipping our customers to optimize the use of the technology. That is why our main interest is in solutions. Sometimes we feel that the sector does not pay sufficient attention to issues like data storage and protection. We are going to be marketing services aggressively. Apart from that we will be looking at offering consultancy services.”
Not unmindful of the importance of managing the image of a company that has been shrouded in controversy, Sukhu espoused giving back to the community in which he grew up. He is engaging the local NDC about creating a space in the Diamond Community Centre to set up an IT area, while the Diamond Secon-dary School is also to benefit. Sukhu said he plans to give some of his own time to providing training.
Whether this young entrepreneur is simply putting a brave face on the challenges that lie ahead or whether he has already devised a formula for coping with those challenges is difficult to say. When asked about what he thinks lies ahead, however, he simply smiles and says, “we do not intend to go away.”
