Karimnagar: Meet Phaniraj from an office boy in court to CEO of IT company

Karimnagar: From being an office boy in a district court to becoming the president and CEO of a multi-crore IT services company, the journey of Phaniraj Jaligama is full of inspiration. The desire to excel in life and to reach higher positions drove him to reach the destinations he wanted to reach. He still feels he has not yet reached the goal he wanted to reach.

Phaniraj says that the thought of reaching further heights always haunts him and every time he wants to achieve something, this feeling pushes him forward. Probably it is the factor that made him CEO of an IT company.

He hails from Peddapalli town in erstwhile Karimnagar district. His father used to sell registration stamps there. As his father's crumbled his family had to spend days with the little property his grandfather left. By the time he passed tenth class that property melted away.

Because of financial constraints, he stopped studies with SSC in which he scored 85 percent. He worked in a pan shop, as an agent for a Telugu weekly, studied ITI and worked as electrician, completed intermediate with the money from those works, besides working as a driver. Phaniraj secured an office boy job in Karimnagar District Court and it was his first government job. On seeing the preference of the clerk in court he wanted to get that job. Someone suggested that if he clears shorthand exams he can get a copyist job with the same status.

Then he decided to learn shorthand and with the permission of judge Mastanamma, worked as a security guard for the court at night and used to go to Hyderabad in the morning and learn shorthand.

With practice he was able to write 225 words per minute in shorthand and passed the exam with distinction.

"I got that job by attending a competition for copyists in the District Court that year," Phaniraj recalled.

In the meantime he married Srilalita, an MCA graduate.

As his wife could get an IT job with her degree Phaniraj planned to resign from his job to study MBA. It was in the year 2000, no IT company was hiring 'freshers' because of the Y2K crisis as a result even after four years of efforts, she did not get a job.

"I have already completed the correspondence degree. My wife suggested that an IT job would be more appropriate for me because of my talent and told me to give it a try. Then I took a long leave from a government job, started learning computer courses and I got a job in an IT company in Pune" Phaniraj told The Hans India explaining his entry into the IT field.

His first salary was Rs 15, 000. Within six months of joining, he realised IT is the future. Despite opposition from relatives Phaniraj resigned from the government job. Then completed MBA and joined TCS as a senior manager and received a salary of Rs 4.5 lakh per month. "After that I went on to become an Associate Director at Cognizant Technology in 2015. That's when I came up with the idea of setting up my own company with my friend Arun Kumar and founded 'Ojas Innovative Technologies Pvt. Ltd."

"The company that was once founded with the money by selling my wives' jewelery is now receiving a turnover of about Rs 50 crore a year. Large companies such as Siemens and Infusion Soft in the US are our customers" Phaniraj explained.

Phaniraj said that as he is aware of the troubles he and his wife faced to enter the IT sector not only the top rankers in the colleges but also those who are struggling in Ameerpet are being recruited as employees.

We are training ourselves by giving a package of up to RS 5 lakh. We recently started a company called Hashblocks Technologies Private Limited as an affiliate of our company. Through this, we are training those who have studied BA and BCom and those who want to enter the IT industry and recruiting them in Ojas.

Ojas is the only company in our country to do such an experiment after Zoho Corporation, he added.