Naik's journey from Bollywood to IT

Hailing from Amravati in Maharashtra, Prashant Naik comes from a humble family background. He completed his schooling from Prabhodham Vidhyalaya, a school in neighbouring town, Dariyapur. After he completed his schooling, he moved to Mumbai to continue higher studies at Principal LN Welinkar Institute of Management Development and Research, where he did his Diploma in Business Management. Naik then went to join Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies to study Diploma in Computer Management. "I wanted to learn the nitty gritty of trade and also about computers and this compelled me to get educated in both the streams, following which I decided to put in efforts in efforts to fulfill my dreams," said Prashant Naik, proprietor of Networld Technologies.

INITIAL DAYS
Naik said, "My elder brother Sandip Naik used to work for companies like Nebula, AMD etc and his field had always excited me. I had decided up then that this is the field where I will carve my niche." Before starting off to Mumbai, Naik had registered his company under the name Networld Technolgies in 1996.
Post his studies in Mumbai, Naik was renting out laptops, TV and other equipments to movie and serial production houses. He was always enticed by the film and television world, and to his luck some of the industry guys approached him for technical help. "I was really excited to take this up and put in an extra effort to work it out. In due course time, a surprise knocked at my doorsteps. I was offered a small role in two serials called Damini and Bandhini. I also got to act in then famous horror serial called Zee Horror Show." He further added that I also acted in a movie which never saw light called Hum Panchi Hai Dhaal Mein where Sunil Shetty was the hero.
"There was not much money coming in from the glamour business and my part time work with my company was not leading me anywhere," said Naik. In around 2000-01, Naik was hanging between this two ventures of his life, totally clueless and without direction. Although he had bagged orders from Mantralaya, J J Hospital, Nair Hospital etc. but due to his divided interest his business never progressed as expected. During these days, he even worked with Compaq as a sales executive.
"It was my brother who brought my senses back and helped me get back my direction in life. It was then, when I took one of the biggest decision of my life to move back to Amravati," said Naik.

BACK TO BUSINESS
All set to establish his foothold in Amravati, Naik starts operating his business from his hometown. For the next two years, he was shuttling between Amravati and Mumbai fulfilling any business requirement coming along his way.
During those days, Pentium 4 and Celeron were the most selling CPUs and Naik had decided to become a leading partner in that region. However, business was not easy in the early 2000, as PC and other devices were very expensive as compared to today. Naik said, "This was my only source of income and only one or two machines used to be sold in a month. The going was getting really tough and financial problems were constantly looming at large."
In days to come, money was not rolling on in on time and to sustain, he had to open up a juice center right next to this shop in Amravati. Naik said, "I don't come from a cash rich family, but my I started off my business again with money given to me by my parents. But then as the business was not really picking up, I had to venture into many things."
Naik even picked up assembling jobs in Mumbai and used to walk it up to nearby places with the assembled PCs. Naik said, "2003-2006 was the most difficult period of my life. I even used to sell refrigerators, furniture etc. I used to get `100 to do rounds between Andheri and Dadar, I used to save from it for food and then save from those amount on a daily basis to go back to Amaravati." He further added the biggest problem was the delay in payments from the companies and the order-size was never that big, so it was always touch and go scenario.
Then one day in 2006, which one can term as the biggest day of a person's life rolled in for Naik. This was when he won a contract to implement printers at the government office in Nagpur. Naik said, "I was the happiest man when I received a cheque of `1.60 lakh from Arumugham. For me, it was as if I had won a lottery."
After years of hardship and struggle, Naik's dedication and perseverance has paid off. Today, he takes up only large contracts and deals in brands like Dell, Lenovo, HP, HCL, and Acer. He is one of the respected channel partners in the region and is also helping out other channel partners through Amravati Computer Dealers Association (ACDA), wherein he is the president too.

FINAL THOUGHTS
"One has to always have a positive approach in life and should never give up his dreams," said Naik. He used to derive his motivation from the books of Shiva Khera and Philip Kotler's books. "There was a time in 1998, when everybody around me questioned and doubted me and the IT business, I had chosen but then I knew and decided to stick by it. I believe dedication and perseverance always pays off as it has for me," concluded Naik.