Mr. Manjit Dey Founder and CEO of DIFM 360 offer Facilities Management courses and certificate programs. His rich and varied experience comes from working within diversified industry sectors. He has around 25 years of Strategic Management and Operational experience into Corporate Real Estate Project & Facilities Management.
Pioneering a Revolution in the Facilities Management Industry - Visionary Leader Manjit Dey.
Prior to setting up and leading the industrial park
operations for Ascendas Firstspace (CapitaLand, SG) and Embassy Industrial Parks,
Manjit has been at leadership positions at brands such as Suzlon
Infrastructures Ltd (Aspen & Synefra), Feedback Infra Services, Bharti
Realty and has served clients such as Asian Development Bank, American Express,
Agilent Technologies Airtel and Hewitt Associates to name a few.
Manjit comes with an entrepreneurial mindset,
the ability to develop business across geographies and agility to prioritize
operational needs from organizational standpoint– qualities that are attributed
to his blend of being a strong and visionary operating leader. After having spent
about 25 years in the corporate, he felt the need to take his acquired subject
matter expertise and passion to uplift, upgrade and transform the blue collar
workforce within the fraternity and to give them a space of respectability in
the industry. The outcome envisaged was to bring about employability, economic
prosperity and respect through teaching people. This gave birth to his new
venture DIFM 360- the only e-learning platform into Facilities Management courses
and certificate programs in India.
We all love our childhood days.
Manjit loves the most those days of his childhood. He is from middle-class
family of academicians and musicians from a small town called Shillong , the
capital city of Meghalaya situated in the North Eastern part of the country
Music came to him naturally right from his childhood given the environment that
he grew up in. He has started his schooling from Irish Convent named
St.Edmund’s School meticulously disciplined and graduated from National
Institute of Technology, Jalandhar in Electronics and Communication engineering.
As he said, those were the favorite days of his life like the summer of 69! He
was a relatively bright student in school and college. Apart from being very
good with academics, he was very good in sports as well. He has Athletics
records in school till date,that is what has actually imbibed him along with
being resilient to the challenges of life. . Manjit
believes in carefree life and being extremely competitive.
“The best part of my childhood
was actually you know living a Carefree life. I think that was what which
always got me to excel. In whatever I got into, it is serving me. Today, it is
giving me back its returns. When I feel that to achieve something in life you
really need to be focused. You really need to be there. You really need to
put in the hundred percent. You really need to develop that sense of faith
and belief in yourself. I think that's what it is to practice in childhood. Coming
from an academic background studies has always been important to us and I would
say that the fighting Spirit and the resilience and the tenacity was built into
us by a father who has, being one of the strongest person’s in our life and
today when we are fighting through life and, we're trying to do something new
out of the blues, so this is being the huge contribution”. Manjit Says.
If we look at Mr. Manjit today, we will be forced to think
about how this man has been so perfect with the things. His diversified
experience and the people who have contributed in his life made him “Mr.
Perfect”. He has started his career with manufacturing company in Kankroli, Rajasthan
where he got an opportunity to work with the top level management closely
through the training period or as a mentor and mentee program. The program
entailed just sitting in the GM’s cabin and watching closely how the GM
conducted business. This program gave him brilliant insight as to how such
senior level leaders took decisions? How was the day planned and spent? How
organized are they? How do they deal with labor unions? How does production
actually affect? Even after office hours he got an opportunity to interact with
them.
After this experience he joined small company however had to
move on after a year as the company was not doing well, it was the bad phase especially
considering the fact that he had just got married and had to endure a situation
which left him quite disheartened. He was somehow managing his limited funds to
tide the period over. Under such a situation, one phone call changed his life.
That call was from Partha Sarthi, the person who has introduced Manjit to the
Facility Management Industry in 2002.Then he moved to Delhi and joined Asian
Development Bank. Asian development Bank was at that point of time, going
through a transition from the project stage to the operating stage, and he was
the head of the transition. He has learnt many things in this period. He was
the head of the Department, So right from strategizing the policy to
implementing it and also seeing that it was effective in working in the right
manner, was a new learning for him. Post this he joined Bharti Airtel which is
the part of Airtel Group. He has served Bharti for approximately 5 years.
Communication skills helped him at high level to succeed
further in life. After moving out from Feedback and he joined Suzlon Infrastructures
as Business Head of SEZs.. This is where he has given allotted the additional
roles of sales and marketing and project management along with his already
existing responsibility of being the Head of Facilities Management department
at a time. We can see Manjit is a person who always accepts challenges in a
positive way. He has been putting 100% in his each role. For an example when he
joined Suzlon, Suzlon was going through a challenging situation and the
financial crunch was so much that to manage that company was the biggest
learning experience of his life. He realized then that Cash-flow was king in
managing a business and anyone who understood this aspect was good for life. He
has played very crucial role in the demanding situation and was able to
successfully manage both the companies entrusted to him with sheer grit and a
Never Say Die attitude. He learning experience in Suzlon has been very
enriching to mould him into this leader today.
It was the experience gained in Suzlon was really phenomenal
because it shaped him to what he is today. One fine day while being employed
with CapitaLand, he decided to answer his higher calling, leave his comfort
zone and get into e-learning business for facilities management. DIFM360 is the
brand which took birth and came into existence after giving thought to every
aspect of his life experience. He decided to offer his expertise through DIFM36,
an online portal for training people into Facilities Management, which is my core
competency, which has been my bread and butter, and which is what he has excelled
in for these last 25 years having done that where he did not look back. He put in
his papers and within a period of two months, that moment was, in the month of
October, I started DIFM360 to bridge the employability gap existing between the
Industry and the Institutes.
Concept behind the DIFM is “I felt there was a lot of un-employability
or unemployable people especially at the grass-root level, the blue collar workforce
where people walked into facilities management by chance not by choice. I am a
live example of that without having a background, I walked into Facilities
Management. However, I learned my way up and this is the learning that I feel we
need to share to make the industry more structured, more organized by
“Transforming Facilities Management” from a “Career of Chance” to a “Career of
Choice”!!
Message to the generation:
“Apply yourself more than hundred percent. If you get that
reward for that effort, it was destined. If you don't get the reward, never
give up but give it another chance of not hundred percent ,give it two hundred
percent. So keep going, keep learning. I would say, don't get stuck up in your
comfort zone. Challenge your fears. People are all worried about having a salary
at the end of the month, because they feel comfortable but sometimes you need
to get out of the Fear Zone to challenge yourself and take a leap into the
unknown”. Secondly, the biggest thing on this Earth is being Happy. Happiness
starts with you. If you are happy within, then only you will be able to make
other people happy. If you yourself are not happy, how can you bring happiness
to the other people? Some way or the other, they will always be a void. So,
first start with yourself, be happy. And I want to be as Happy as possible for
the next you know, whatever years”.