Call Us : +81 45-222-3384
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Email Address : marketing@sunwells.com
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Woking Hour : 09 am - 06 pm(JST)
Call Us : +81 45-222-3384
Email Address : marketing@sunwells.com
Woking Hour : 09 am - 06 pm(JST)
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
My hometown is Chennai, a port city in South India, facing the Bay of Bengal. In Japan, it is probably better known by its former name, Madras. I was working as a CAD engineer after graduating from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Madras, when I suddenly saw a small recruitment advertisement in a local newspaper. It was for a mechanical design engineer to work in Japan. I had always had a vague idea that I wanted to work in a foreign country, but the idea of "Working in Japan" was very new and exciting to me, as I had always thought of the United States and the United Kingdom as foreign countries.
With the support of my family, I applied for the employment examination and fortunately passed, but I had never left my hometown of Chennai before, and working and living in Japan was a new experience and a series of surprises
I came to Japan in 2001 as a mechanical design engineer for a major electronics manufacturer, but I could barely speak Japanese and had to rely on an interpreter at work every day. However, I decided that I needed to master Japanese to work in Japan, and after about a year, I had no trouble speaking it. In 2004, I became a project manager at an automobile manufacturer, managing more than 100 foreign engineers
My work was going well, but the Lehman shock in 2008 caused the company I was working for to go bankrupt. Seven Indian engineers who had joined the company through my introduction also belonged to the company, and I couldn't leave them in the lurch. However, at that time, there was no way to accept foreign engineers in Japan, so I decided that I had no choice but to establish my own company and hire them as temporary workers, and in 2010, I started Sunwell.
In the early days of Sunwell, the company had no credibility, and we were often rejected on the mere idea of dispatching foreign engineers. There were times when we thought we had finally found a client, but then the Great East Japan Earthquake hit and all the foreign engineers had to return home. However, by carefully explaining the merits of accepting foreign engineers from Japanese companies, and by educating foreign engineers to avoid the culture gap between Japan and their home countries, the number of people hired gradually increased. In 2020, Sunwell will celebrate its 10th anniversary, and the number of foreign engineers affiliated with Sunwell will exceed 300.
I think the biggest difference between Japan and India is what people look for in a job. In Japan, the first thing we look for is "Accuracy," but in India, the emphasis is on "Speed. My theory is that "Speed over Accuracy" is a priority not only in India, but in countries all over the world. I believe that Japan has succeeded as a technological superpower because of its pursuit of accuracy, but if this trend continues, Japan will be left behind by the rest of the world. Therefore, I believe that a hybrid work style of Japan and India, where work is done accurately without much reduction in speed, will be required in Japan in the future. This style of work is what Sunwell is good at, and we believe that proposing and implementing this style to Japanese companies will be a stimulus for Japan.
For the foreign engineers working in Japan at Sunwell, I always tell them to be aware that the people they are working with are from different cultures and to respect cultural differences. There are many people at Sunwell, including myself, who have built their careers in countries other than their own, and we understand firsthand how important it is to understand the differences in culture and working styles in each country. For this reason, we can efficiently provide education, support, and career design to foreign engineers dispatched by Sunwell so that they do not fall into the culture gap at Japanese companies. We believe that such global human resources will be indispensable for Japanese companies to implement their global strategies.
In this day and age of rapid change, it is important to be flexible and constantly change our goals and plans. For this reason, it is impossible to imagine what Sunwell will look like in 10 years, and even if we could, it would be wrong to make its realization the goal of corporate management. The most important thing for me since the establishment of the company is to continue to take on "new challenges" without fixing the future goal, and to keep our foreign engineers, employees, and customers happy in the company now and in the future.
From now on, in addition to the engineer dispatch and introduction mediation business, we plan to focus on IT offshore development and Japanese language education for Indians who wish to work in Japan. I look forward to working with Sunwell as we continue to take on new challenges
