Ram explains: “We had 10 very successful years, but our aim was always to go into the corporate market. We had ambitions to go beyond offering a retail experience.”
The group moved into IT management and support and in 2011 started to build its software development team. The audio-visual offering followed in 2017.
Throughout it all the mantra that the customer is king has remained and Nybble’s growing list of clients ranges from SMEs and education providers through to major blue chip and international businesses.
Ram, 48, says Nybble’s development is a continuing journey, with acquisitions on the horizon, along with the opening of operations and bases in other parts of Lancashire and the wider North West. He says: “We’re really looking to make headway with acquisitions this year as well as taking advantage of the benefits that operating in a good location can bring.”
Tech is at the heart of the operation but for Ram it could have all been so different. He studied for his degree in accountancy and information systems at the University of Central Lancashire and initially had a legal career in his sights. And after university he was offered a position with one of the big six accountancy firms.
Instead he ended up working in IT for Mercedes commercial dealerships instead, setting up Nybble after working to study his MSc from Lancaster University.
Going back even earlier in time and the young Ram had ambitions to be a professional snooker player. He recalls how Steve Davis was
his favourite player and his father buying him a snooker table, paid for in instalments. A pool table in Nybble’s head office reveals his love for cue games continues.
The excitement
of business for me is giving back
Ram says: “I was brought up in a two-up, two down house. There were six of us in there and four of us shared a bedroom. I used to save up for weeks to buy a cake for a treat, I really used to enjoy that cake.”
His father came to the UK from India in the 1960s, where he had been a high court barrister, and moved to Blackburn from London in the 1970s, finding work as a machine operator in a factory in the town while studying and attaining a first-class honours degree and MSc in maths and computing. He ended his career writing codes for washing machine programmes.
Ram says: “We had nothing, but we had everything. Mum was a simple sari wearing lady who knew no English. She went to English classes and ended up learning Gujarati. She could always make people laugh and just wanted to look after her family which she did with pride and vigour.
“My parents are no longer with us, but we try and live to their values. It’s through those values they will live on, just as we will live on through what we teach our children.”
Those values include supporting and valuing young people. As well as its support for the local youth zone, the company continues to back Nightsafe, a homeless charity, from where it takes on and trains apprentices.
Ram says: “If you can change just one life then it makes everything you do worthwhile”. He is also a governor at Blackburn College, where he studied his A levels. He says: “There are so many talented young people out there.
“There’s an Elon Musk in every town and city, inventing things in their mind. We have to find them and bring them out of their back bedrooms and into the fore. It’s about inspiring the young generation not only to come up with ideas but actually take them to market.” He adds: “If you are a gardener and want to attract bees, because it is the right thing for your garden, you have to put in the right ecosystem so the bees will come and do what you need them to do.
“Creating that ecosystem doesn’t happen by chance. You have to plant the right seeds and nurture them, so the bees not only come, but they stay. I don’t see it being any different in business.
“You have to make sure you create the right environment, so your people feel needed and valued.
It’s making sure your organisation is
doing the right things, so they can be proud to say they work for the company.
“That to me is at the heart of ESG. You also have to leave this world in a better place then you found it. It’s as simple as that.”
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THE BIG INTERVIEW
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