Her passion and enthusiasm that fired up Jyoti Mukherjee and put her on the path to greatness still ripples through her every time she talks about issues close to her heart — family, employees, Kenya, business and of course, computers.
Jyoti Mukherjee, the trendsetter, technocrat and nurturer, is never too far away from the action. More than two decades ago, she set about developing her own coding and software development skills business that gave birth to Software Technologies Limited (STL), now based in Kenya, but with a direct marketing presence in Tanzania and Uganda.
One would be forgiven for concluding that there was nothing in the family circumstances of Indian-born Mukherjee to prepare her for the ICT role she was to play in Kenya, Africa and the world. “I am the seventh born in a family of eight children. If there was family planning done, I would have missed out,” she laughs.
Words of Wisdom
- Success is down to six attributes: Planning, focus, self-belief, a positive attitude, love for those around you, and working tirelessly and patiently.
- Work hard, live simply. Never expect too much and enjoy life.
- Every guest is a god. They should never leave hungry.
- If each of us purposes to educate/train five people in our field of expertise, the world will be VERY different.
- Whatever you do, do it 100% — work, fun, conversation — whatever; unless it is a fire-fighting situation. Fragmentation takes away excellence.
- You are a better human being than you were yesterday. Give yourself props.
- Day to day events take a toll on your body. Make some ‘ME-time’ to wipe out the chaff. REST.
- Forgive, forgive, forgive.
- Self-realisation is the best realisation.
- For your marriage go less on the ‘rights’ and more on friendship. When you have friendship, you have it all.
- Growing up, Mukherjee’s father had an insurance business and also participated in community service. “From age 14, I earned from some social work I did with him — training in public speaking, selecting leaders for specific causes among others,” Mukherjee says, and chuckles, “I weaved wire baskets for sale, too.”
At 16, she joined the University of Bombay (now Mumbai) to pursue a degree in commerce. Her first formal job was as a secretary in an export company where she rose to the director’s position in five years, thanks to her knack for devising solutions for just about anything.
“This is how I knew I was cut out to run a big corporate,” she says. She took all her earnings, which included what she was making from tutoring high school students, to secure her dream — accounting and management. Tailoring and embroidery are her artsy passions. She did them in her spare time. There was no room for idle time.
In 1985, Mukherjee accompanied her husband to Kenya to set up a printing supplies shop in Nairobi. Another light bulb lit up. All the offices she walked into had people using Pentium One (an early model of) computers for mere typing and printing. She recalled using her IBM typewriter for much more.
She consequently ripped apart the computer in her head, envisioning software that could take away the headaches of routine tasks and creating much needed time and liberty for employees to think more strategically and innovatively.
The excitement of the idea that those around her could enjoy the benefits of the computer’s other abilities, birthed a heightened curiosity for just what more the computer could do for a company’s extra margins. “In 1989, I asked my husband if I could do go to the US for a master’s degree. He and my children were very supportive,” Mukherjee remembers. Her mind garnered the capacity to build much bigger sought-after solutions, she says.
Two years later Software Technologies Limited (STL) was born. It started with zero capital and just five people. The challenges were numerous. Besides the small team, which meant a stretched human resource, the market did not believe that local companies could deliver. “The few clients we came by insisted on set up of the service before paying up,” Mukherjee recalls. The government had no incentives for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at the time. Then loans from the banks were not easy to come by. This meant constrained growth.
There were other barriers for Mukherjee. “As a woman in Africa, there is usually the perception that you are the daughter or wife of an influential person if you are involved in something big,” she says.
To overcome the challenges that come with running a business, Mukherjee and her team stayed ahead of the game by listening intently to their clients’ needs.
STL has been an innovation powerhouse, offering celebrated custom software development, consultancy, support and training, both on the Oracle E-Business Suite and on STL’s eHORIZON. These software packages serve the needs of various business industries — financial services, manufacturing, energy, utilities, consumer services, transport, public services, and NGOs.
STL has 150 as clients corporations in Africa and the Middle East, making Mukherjee one of the few women doing well in IT business in the Jyoti Mukherjee, the trendsetter, technocrat and nurturer, is never too far away from the action. More than two decades ago, she set about developing her own coding and software development skills business that gave birth to Software Technologies Limited (STL), now based in Kenya, but with a direct marketing presence in Tanzania and Uganda.
One would be forgiven for concluding that there was nothing in the family circumstances of Indian-born Mukherjee to prepare her for the ICT role she was to play in Kenya, Africa and the world. “I am the seventh born in a family of eight children. If there was family planning done, I would have missed out,” she laughs.
Growing up, Mukherjee’s father had an insurance business and also participated in community service. “From age 14, I earned from some social work I did with him — training in public speaking, selecting leaders for specific causes among others,” Mukherjee says, and chuckles, “I weaved wire baskets for sale, too.”
At 16, she joined the University of Bombay (now Mumbai) to pursue a degree in commerce. Her first formal job was as a secretary in an export company where she rose to the director’s position in five years, thanks to her knack for devising solutions for just about anything.
“This is how I knew I was cut out to run a big corporate,” she says. She took all her earnings, which included what she was making from tutoring high school students, to secure her dream — accounting and management. Tailoring and embroidery are her artsy passions. She did them in her spare time. There was no room for idle time.
In 1985, Mukherjee accompanied her husband to Kenya to set up a printing supplies shop in Nairobi. Another light bulb lit up. All the offices she walked into had people using Pentium One (an early model of) computers for mere typing and printing. She recalled using her IBM typewriter for much more.
She consequently ripped apart the computer in her head, envisioning software that could take away the headaches of routine tasks and creating much needed time and liberty for employees to think more strategically and innovatively.
The excitement of the idea that those around her could enjoy the benefits of the computer’s other abilities, birthed a heightened curiosity for just what more the computer could do for a company’s extra margins. “In 1989, I asked my husband if I could do go to the US for a master’s degree. He and my children were very supportive,” Mukherjee remembers. Her mind garnered the capacity to build much bigger sought-after solutions, she says.
Two years later Software Technologies Limited (STL) was born. It started with zero capital and just five people. The challenges were numerous. Besides the small team, which meant a stretched human resource, the market did not believe that local companies could deliver. “The few clients we came by insisted on set up of the service before paying up,” Mukherjee recalls. The government had no incentives for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at the time. Then loans from the banks were not easy to come by. This meant constrained growth.
There were other barriers for Mukherjee. “As a woman in Africa, there is usually the perception that you are the daughter or wife of an influential person if you are involved in something big,” she says.
To overcome the challenges that come with running a business, Mukherjee and her team stayed ahead of the game by listening intently to their clients’ needs.
STL has been an innovation powerhouse, offering celebrated custom software development, consultancy, support and training, both on the Oracle E-Business Suite and on STL’s eHORIZON. These software packages serve the needs of various business industries — financial services, manufacturing, energy, utilities, consumer services, transport, public services, and NGOs.
STL has 150 as clients corporations in Africa and the Middle East, making Mukherjee one of the few women doing well in IT business in the region. The company’s clients include CIC Insurance, Equity Bank, Citi Bank, KenGen and Kenya Wildlife Service.
In 2000, Mukherjee was awarded the Best Entrepreneur of the Year prize by Computer Society of Kenya. She bagged the Hall of Fame Awards Enterprise from the Government of Kenya and was named the ICT Business Woman of Africa at the African ICT Achievers Awards in 2007. Her company, Software Technologies Limited (STL), has featured in the Top 100 Fast Growing Companies in Kenya every year since 2009. It scooped the Top ICT Company title among The Top Fast Growing Companies Awards in 2011. She also won the Ernst & Young (EY) Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 Awards (EOYA) in the Emerging Category. Her product eHORIZONHRMS, developed in 1995, has won several accolades — one being from the Computer Society of Kenya — The Best Human Resource Management System in East Africa.
Mukherjee’s passion for teaching people how to make their work on computers more graceful and rewarding is inexhaustible. As a resul,t another giant was birthed in 2004 — the Institute of Software Technologies (IST). It is a fully fledged ICT training institute that provides education for IT professionals, developers and business analysts. Its clientele is drawn from as far as South Africa, Niger, Nigeria, Malawi, Morocco and all of Eastern Africa.
In 2011, STL was the first Kenyan software company to launch a large-scale commercial offering to the government and the private sector through Software as a Service (SaaS).
Mukherjee describes SaaS as a cloud-based technology that uses Internet applications to provide software solutions at a low cost of ownership. Improvements in Kenya’s ICT infrastructure have led to increased connectivity at lower costs and opened the market for SaaS to a growing number of SMEs in Africa and other emerging markets.
“The cost of borrowing in much of Africa is prohibitively expensive with commercial banks at rates of 15–25 per cent per year,” says the ICT expert, adding that this has put capital-intensive technology and software projects out of reach of SMEs.
What differentiates SaaS for other software is that it provides organisations with world-class solutions, but with no up-front capital expenditure and with affordable subscription fees.
Mukherjee and her husband also empower the underprivileged by giving scholarships (25–100 per cent of tuition fees) for basic computer literacy in their various tele-centres in rural Kenya. “We then work at getting them jobs,” the ICT guru-cum-philanthropist explains.
The project aims to make the young recipients self-sustaining, placing them in a position to better the livelihoods of those around them. Over 5,000 graduates and school leavers have benefited from the programme, including 100 children from Kajiado who have lost their parents to HIV/Aids — a cause the Mukherjees consider very personal.
“We do small things as we wait for big things to happen. It is our small way of having less crime due to lack, while contributing to Kenya’s development.” She further shares that the ICT know-how is crucial as it exposes beneficiaries to much-needed information, besides putting food on their tables.
Two of Mukherjee’s children are also into computer software. Her daughter is a technophile and social entrepreneur and her older son works at STL.
On living a life that counts, she says, “I tell my children that there are many doctors, many engineers, many great business people and all, but you have to be good people before you are anything else.” She adds, “I feel very blessed. If you have a great business out there and your children are soaked in drugs or other illicit behaviour, it is not worth it,” sighs the entrepreneur.
What is her fixation? “Machines,” she says. “I will not sleep until I have broken through all the features of a new gadget. When it gets too complicated, I ask my children, my husband or whoever else.”
Mukherjee loves reading — she loves information. She loves to think and fix stuff. And she loves people. “I take time to inspire them to be the best they can be,” she says