The voyage of Joy
Sebastian, son of a fisherman, from a remote coastal hamlet of Alappuzha
district of Kerala is ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’.
Joy’s parents Sebastian and Mary struggled
hard through out the year to keep the pot boiling with a meager income from
seasonal fishing. Their children Joy Sebastain and his elder brother Job
Sebastian were brought up in a government sponsored one room set colony where
learning and unlearning was their life itself but study was a luxury. The
parents always had to have a choice to pay for text books or day to day ration.
A determined mother Mary always preferred to opt spending for children’s
education to household expenses and even restrained her husband from buying an
ordinary fishing boat of their own. The children had to compromise for new
clothes and even for a two day meal, especially during rainy season. Such
struggle and determination often made accusations from neighbours and relatives
for such futile investments on education against basic survival. Struggle came
almost an end when elder son Job Sebastian had completed his polytechnic
education and got a job in a company. After a few months in the job the family
was in the verge of fortune when he got another appointment order from a polytechnic
college as a lecturer, but he died in a bike accident before joining.
Struggling Joy, continued his MCA in TKM college, Kollam, receiving some
scholarship from the company where his brother worked and with the support of
some friends and giving tutorials to young students.
He was rejected in many
interviews due to poor communication as he had only vernacular schooling. “Even
poor family background would have adverse effect on your talent during
interviews,” Joy recalls. “That is why I have decided to rebuild myself without
having any support from corporate companies,” he added. Joy always keeps a
village touch in his outlook and always cared only for quality and talent of
aspirants in his company rather than look and marklist. “I always give
importance to local talents that most of the employees in my company are from
the same locality and my vision is to give job to more local aspirants to give
them a decent livelihood,” says he.
Unlike other start ups
Joy’s company was not started as a concept mode. He started his office at home
in 2007 taking up assignments of a company where he had been working when it
was stopped and the entrepreneur shifted to the U.S. The company Techgentia was
registered in 2009 with zero investment with his friend Tony Thomas as
co-founder while continuing his own house as its office. Techgentia expanded in
2013 by shifting the office to a hired building in Ernakulam town. Until 2014,
it had struggled hard as it was depending on only one client. It slowly started
canvasing for more clients while shifting to Info Park, Cherthala, from where
it started its stable and steady journey of success with an array of
international clients. Keeping a
desi touch and maintaining international
standards, now the company has won the one crore worth Innovation Challenge,
beating HCL and SOHO to challenge web conferencing solutions like Zoom and
Google Meet.
(Published
on 24th August 2020, Volume XXXII, Issue 35)
