Born and raised in Delhi, Amrish Kumar Jain likes to call himself a “hardcore Delhite”, and rightly so, as his schooling and higher education were all completed here. His initial schooling was from Mahavir Senior Model School and later joined Kulachi Hansraj Model School, both in Delhi. Jain completed his B.sc Hons. in mathematics from the University of Delhi and later completed his Masters in Computer Science from MD University.Jain was a sportsman during his young schooling days and was “fairly decent” in studies. “I would not like to call myself good, bad, or fine”, he adds. He took up the science stream in 11th standard, specializing his time in the computer subject as that was the time when his interest started to build in the field.
Jain’s childhood dream was to join the Indian Army, but couldn’t pursue that due to a major accident that took a toll on his arm. “My right arm, during 9th or 10th, before the exam had multiple fractures due to which the physical rounds were not possible”, he said. The computer was the next thing that captivated his interests due to which he started pursuing it.
Early Career
“Initially I started off my career with a small company, they were software developers but due to the IT bubble which got burst, couldn’t get a stable job early in my career”, Jain said.
He initially worked as a Software consultant and Network manager at JNC Engineers Private Limited. Later, he joined ZAP Infotech as a project instructor, then Alphasoft as a software developer. However, his first big break was in PVR where he was called to work as an IT administrator since they were looking for a developer. “That’s where I started off my career. That was an interesting area because initially, nobody thought that a cinema’s division can have an IT department- what would an IT department do in Cinema?”, Jain said.
During that time, PVR was the first cinema division that introduced the IT department for the first time. He learned a lot about user experience and PVR has always been heavily into innovation and investments. With every passing year there, he devoted his time and energy more to innovations and developing new solutions like “real-time websites, mobile applications, wallet systems, and kiosks(which was a relatively new concept, not known by many people, used for automated ticketing)”, he adds.
After working at PVR, he joined the Reliance Big Cinemas and got exposure to multi-country environments “like USA, Malaysia, Nepal, Mauritius, etc,” he said. He explained how Big Cinemas expanded quite rapidly all across the globe.
After his time at Reliance, he was called back to work with PVR. “At Reliance, I got exposure to working on SAP, and in PVR got exposure to working on Microsoft Dynamics. Again the next level of innovation started when we started working on the cashless economy system, about which people understood only after demonetization. We in PVR were way ahead of others in innovation”, Jain explained. They were also ahead of everyone with the introduction of NFC technology. After working in PVR for the next few years, he joined Innoviti Payment Solutions, which was all about banking. There, he learned a lot about payments and developing solutions for this industry.
Four years ago, he joined Tally Solutions as a CIO and has been taking care of all the enterprise systems(the company’s requirement of technology), and to him, “it has been an enriching experience on how the entire ecosystem can be managed along with strong fundamentals of the value system.”.
Leadership lessons for everyone
One of the biggest leadership lessons that his father gave him is a very old saying which explains how one should remain humble no matter how much one flourishes and succeeds in life. “Stay grounded and be as humble as possible. The moment success gets to your head, you’re doomed”, he explained. Two other life lessons that he learned from his mentors, especially his ex-boss, talked about “never giving up and that hard work will take you everywhere. The limit to one’s hard work should be like your life’s dependent on it”, he expressed. He has taken these lessons to the heart and aims to follow them for as long as he can continue.
On being asked about some of his biggest achievements, he expressed that “the biggest achievement is yet to come”. However, he considers being able to work with various OEMs like Microsoft, Blackberry, Google, IBM, etc across borders and geographies as an achievement. “This kind of heterogeneity gave me a lot of exposure to technology and the people’s side of it”, Jain said.
He considers working with Tally Solutions as an important milestone in his career. “To work for a company like Tally as a CIO is exceptional, primarily because of the way the value systems are engraved. The people’s selection procedure and the in-depth knowledge they bring with them provides a great opportunity to learn and collaborate”, he adds.
Hobbies and motto in life
Jain has been a sportsperson in his younger days and used to play cricket a lot. He calls himself “a hardcore sportsperson”. But after his career took off, all of it was left out and he completely committed himself to be a workaholic. These days he enjoys taking some time out for himself during his breaks. That’s when he realized that there are other things in life as well. Aside from working, he loves traveling and reads books of various genres from time to time.
The main motto which drives him is that “everything is achievable. Never give up and push hard for it”, he said. In the professional future, Jain aims to add more value to the business and wants to shape up the technological landscape and ecosystem of the company. For his personal future, however, he wants to take care of his kids and family. He wants to be with them and watch over them.
