When Darius Mistry, Managing Director of Imagetext Integrated Solutions received the ‘Business Excellence in ICT’ (sponsored by KPMG) and the ‘Best Medium-Sized Business’ (sponsored by Unitec) trophies at the Indian Newslink Indian Business Awards (IBA) Presentation Night held on November 19, 2012, those who knew him and his company were not surprised.
For, over the years, this well-structured and well-administered Central Auckland based (Epsom) IT organisation has become an epitome for quality service and high level of reliability in a mature but fiercely competitive market.
It has also won a number of industry awards in the past few years.
According to the independent panel of judges of IBA, Imagetext richly deserved the ICT Award for its revised strategic focus and robust administration.
“This Company has invested heavily in remote access and mobile technologies and is rated in the top three by Apple Computer. Imagetext is on track to meet its goal to double its bottom line in five years,” the judges said.
Rapid rise
Born, raised and educated in India, Mr Mistry launched his career in IT in Dubai and later moved to Bahrain, where his involvement with Apple and Wang Computers brought him close to the nuances of the industry.
His move to New Zealand on holiday in 1987 changed his life and career.
“The country’s lifestyle was attractive and the initial job offer (only on commission basis) was challenging. I accepted both,” he said.
In less than three months, his take-home pay raised a number of eyebrows, for those who thought that they had earned a great performer ‘cheap’ were proved wrong. His calm and confident approach helped the company to increase its sales but soon, Mr Mistry was talking to the directors of Imagetext, which was well founded (in 1984) but faced a tough market.
The directors were in succession planning mode and Mr Mistry recognised a burgeoning opportunity and began to evince investment interest and by 2001, purchased all the shares of the company.
“It was no doubt a risk but I was confident that with the right people offering the right products and services, nothing would go wrong,” he said.
He was right.
Best of breed
As a leader in providing technology solutions across Apple and Windows, Imagetext has etched for itself a place of pre-eminence in the national and international markets.
The company supplies the ‘best of breed’ products including Apple, Adobe, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Grouplogic, MobileIron, all of which are backed by a technically qualified support department.
“We provide cross-platform integration solutions, which have kept us growing in the last few years. Large technology companies such as Gen-i, HP/EDS, Datacom and Dimension Data have taken us as their IT partners,” Mr Mistry said.
As a premium service provider, the company has a team of eight Apple trained engineers (the largest in New Zealand) and four Microsoft trained engineers, who provide both software and hardware solutions to a growing list of customers.
Imagetext is qualified in all categories of Apple’s technology platform, from workstations to servers and SAN.
Career advancement
“We have created barriers of entry by researching internationally to bring to New Zealand solutions that can assist us maintain this leadership position. We invest in staff training on technologies we introduce to New Zealand,” Mr Mistry said.
As a part of his expansion, diversification and succession programme, he has recently sold 49% of his company’s shares to his business partner John Preisig.
The global financial crisis has hit even global giant Microsoft Corporation, which posted a loss of US$ 492 million in the fourth quarter. Hewlett Packard incurred a massive loss of US$8.9 billion during the same period.
Mr Mistry said the New Zealand IT market continued to be nervous with the attendant cash flow and slowdown in revenue.
“Imagetext is focusing on support services, with onsite, IT and networking solutions for software. We also provide hardware repairs and maintenance for Apple products. We strongly believe we have made a breakthrough in living and breathing customer service and achieved significant bottom line growth because of this shift in our attitude,” he said.
