From India’s 'taat-patti' school to Canada's top tycoon

NEW DELHI:

Arjun Jasuja

, who is known as Andy Jasuja in business circles, is a trailblazer. He is the founder of the Sigma Group of Companies which spans many fields, and employs close to a thousand people across

Canada

, the US, the UK and India.


"I started with Sigma Systems (IT) in 1994 because IT is my forte. Since then, we have diversified into real estate, financing, hospitality, marketing services and health and wellness care," says Jasuja whose family migrated to India from Pakistan during Partition and settled at

Katni

in Madhya Pradesh. He likes to be known as a Punjabi-Sindhi.

An IITian with BTech in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, Jasuja landed in Canada in 1974 to do his Master of Applied Science degree from the University of Waterloo.

"When I left India, I had promised my parents not to settle in Canada. So I returned to India, worked for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for two years, married my wife Mamta and then came back to Canada in December 1977," says the soft-spoken businessman.


With a laugh, he says, "Actually, I came back to Canada with the idea of saving 10 lakh rupees for my children. It was a big amount in those days. After three children and eight years of work, including six years with Scotiabank starting as a senior programme analyst and eventually becoming a director, when my bank balance hit $100,000, I quit the job to return to India for good. But as I was packing to leave Canada, I got a lucrative job offer to teach at the National University of Singapore. So, instead of India, we headed for

Singapore

in 1986."

Ultimately, his family decided to return to

Toronto

.

There, Jasuja worked for a few years in senior positions, including managing partner of electronic banking at Royal Trust (Royal Bank), a position which he left for

Silicon Valley

in the early 1990s. "But the company in Silicon Valley went under within one-and-a-half years and I returned to Toronto."

At that time he decided to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. “I started my first company Sigma Systems in 1994 and have never looked back since then,’’ says Jasuja, who was honoured with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist award for his achievements in entrepreneurship.

“We took risks, raised millions from venture capitalists and businesses took off," says the man who was given the first ever Technology Achievement Award by the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce.

Ever ready to help fellow budding Indo-Canadian entrepreneurs, he brought his friend

Shiv Khera

to deliver a talk at the Indo-Canada of Chamber of Commerce this week.

As he signs off, Jasuja says, "I have a modest background and studied in an ordinary school where we used to sit on taat patti (jute mat). When I was raising millions of dollars from venture capitalists in the 1990s, the National Post ran a front-page story on Sigma. One of the publications ran a story headlined: 'From

jute

mat to corporate boardroom'."