“Patience and empathy are paramount and ironically, scarcely found attributes in entrepreneurs” What makes one a successful businessman or entrepreneur? Some say it’s creativity, others, passion, while others opine organizational and leadership skills as the virtues requisite to make it in the business world. According to Shamit Khemka , CEO of SynapseIndia, an eminent IT outsourcing firm, “patience and empathy are paramount and ironically, scarcely found attributes in entrepreneurs.” He elaborates, "Patience is required because like life, a business has various ups and downs and one has to wait determinedly for the tide to turn. Empathy is necessary because business is not only about blindly generating funds. It is also about people. Till you can not relate to or empathize with others, you will not learn how to forge and nurture business relations. The lack of empathy could eventually lead to the weakening or demise of your enterprise.”

An Ex-Scindian, Khemka commenced his entrepreneurial expedition in 1994, when he established Pharos Infotech. Based out of Kolkata, the company was India’s first ever bulletin board service (Livewire BBS) with emailing service. This was followed by the creation of Sampatti.com in 1998, India’s first interactive real estate Web directory, which brought together the real estate industry and allied services on one platform.

Next, he launched Synapse India , in the year 2000. Headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Synapse has representative offices worldwide and has experienced a growth of 100% every year since its inception. Within only eight years of its establishment, Synapse has managed to acquire a plethora of prestigious recognitions and acknowledgements—the company is NASSCOM and FICCI-certified, and has bagged the distinguished CMMI level-3 accreditation and Microsoft Gold partnership. Khemka looks forward to taking Synapse to new heights, in terms of business generation as well as employee count amplification. The firm aspires to have 5,000 employees by the year 2015.

It is Khemka’s dream to serve the IT vertical, along with his unwavering dedication, that has brought Synapse to the pinnacle it is at now and will take it to the altitudes it will scale in the future.

Besides playing the role of CEO of Synapse, the dynamic 34-year old is also serving as Communication Chair on the board of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, New Delhi.