Digital company records profit
ACTON Fiji made a profit in 2021 despite the impact the second wave of COVID-19 had on the company.
According to director Sanjesh Kumar, for many businesses and enterprises this year, it was a matter of just surviving.
“It was a harsh year for many, for commercial enterprises as well and given that ACTON is a start-up, business did dry up locally so we did have a bit of a struggle here.
“But eventually, we did manage to turn things around and we’ve had very prudent management and decisions along the way.”
He added ACTON had ended its financial year with very good financial showing which was shared to shareholders during the AGM a few weeks ago.
“Obviously, that goes back to the shareholders, the unit holders, the employees and we did see growth in our numbers.
“We added a new department this year and this department is the software engineering department that looks after tailormade custom application development, research and innovation and IP development.”
Mr Kumar said this department would add four more staff members to the company.
ACTON is a 100 per cent employeeowned company which meant that every individual employed there had part ownership in the company.
“So everyone has certain amount of ownership in the company and that is not only in terms of profit distribution, although that is the highlight every year, the ownership extends beyond that into decision making aspects as well.”
Mr Kumar said the AGM was usually targeted at charting the direction of the company for the following year and reporting back to shareholders or unit holders of the company, stakeholders of how the year was and what the highlights were, what some of the struggles were, where ACTON excelled and what they were intending to do the following year.
“So, the AGM usually also touches base on any policy change because of the whole COVID situation, I think the second wave was more detrimental than the first one because we had an extended period of lockdown.
“So, in that scenario, a lot of things shifted paradigm, the workplace moved from the office to the home for many people.”
He said the company had also seen a growth in their offshore clientele as well.
“Because what happened was, we were already in that work from home remote work scenario with this offshore arrangement because most of our customers are offshore in Australia, New Zealand.
“So, we added a new customer, we entered a new market, we added a few more customers, we added more people to our existing customers.
“We had sustained and continued growth shown because what happened was most of the customers of ours who are in other countries, they also wanted to transition from existing on the ground personnel to benefit more and more from our offshore arrangement,” said Mr Kumar.
It was a harsh year for many … and given that ACTON is a start-up, business did dry up locally so we did have a bit of a struggle here.
– Sanjesh Kumar