Blackburn has become a hub of business opportunities, with entrepreneurs choosing to stay in the town and the council bidding for millions of pounds to invest in the town centre.
One business owner, Ram Gupta who owns Nybble, an IT support services company on Blakewater Road in Blackburn is someone who is passionate about the town he’s from. Having launched the first phase of the business in 1998, Nybble is growing strong as a business, but also strong with its position in the local community.
As a patron of Blackburn Youth Zone and governor of Blackburn College, Ram is passionate about giving back to his local community and specifically young people who may not be offered the right opportunities. However, Ram wasn’t always clear about the direction his career would go in, having initially studied to become an auditor.
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Although now an IT expert, Ram thought his career path would lead him elsewhere and studied at university for his auditing qualifications. “I got offered two jobs, one was in IT and the other in auditing and I just found IT really interesting so I chose that route,” Ram told LancsLive.
“When I came out of that job role, I started Nybble and I still find it really interesting – no two days are the same in IT and the company’s evolved with all the trends. For example, in 2009 we were a managed IT business, in 2011 we started doing software development and in 2016/2017 we bought an audio-visual business.
(Image: James Maloney/LancsLive)
“Two years ago, we bought a data center, so the evolution is neverending – next year we’ll do something else, the year after we’ll do something else. If you’re not going forwards in IT, you’re always going backwards.”
Along with Nybble’s evolution, the businesses Ram and the company have kept it local to Blackburn – something Ram is passionate about. “I’m Blackburn born and bred and I went off to university and came back, but that’s the key point, I came back and not because I had to,” Ram added.
“We share a responsibility to leave the Earth in a better condition than we found it and if we all do that the environment we’re in is actually improving.” Ram’s passion for Blackburn as a community has trickled into his work at Nybble and has consistently shown examples of contributing positively to the people in the town and working with them in his business.
He continued: “We’re all about next gen, we’re all about investing in the youth. We run Apprenticeship programs and I’m a governor at Blackburn College, we’re patrons at Blackburn Youth Zone.
“We did a sleepout for Nightsafe last year and we took on two of their resident homeless people. We’ve given them the opportunity to come out of that environment, come into this environment, learn IT and follow a different career path and we will continue to do that
“We know their backgrounds, for example one of them hasn’t turned up today but that’s alright, they’ll turn up tomorrow. Eventually, we’ll get them there – you can’t take them on expecting them to be the finished article
“We’ve taken them on to improve us and to improve them. Everyone’s looking to make money in life to make ends meet, but that’s not our sole purpose here.
“We share that responsibility to have to give back and if you can change one person’s life, you don’t just change that person’s life – you change a whole generation. We have a great sense of pride in seeing Blackburn develop and seeing where it was to where it is now.”
Over the coronavirus pandemic, Ram and the Nybble team gave out over 1,000 laptops to people in Blackburn. He found them through various charities in the town, for example the “unsung heroes, particularly Secret Santa and Rummage Rescuers” to find out who needed them the most.
On this, Ram said: “We leveraged on the organizations that knew the people who needed the devices, plus the people that we knew and people that came to us, not really being able to afford a computer.
“We’d say, what’s your budget for a computer? Oh, I’ve got £100 and you know when someone says they’ve got a £100 budget for a laptop, they can’t really afford it and they’re having to buy it out of necessity.
“You sort of look at them and say ok, £100 isn’t going to change our life but giving that to them for nothing will change their life and give them access to technology and that’s what it did.”
(Image: James Maloney/LancsLive)
Sitting in the Nybble office, it is clear that IT is truly where Ram’s passions lie. Filled with screens on which we find out our prototypes of their products, Ram talks passionately about a coffee table with an embedded screen and a 75″ TV you can “hit with a hammer.”
Ram describes Nybble as having “two start dates”, and when the opportunity arose to establish the business, he wanted to make sure it was the “Richer Sounds of the IT industry”, referring to the successful British home entertainment retailer. The first phase of the business began in 1998 as a retail-focused company.
Ram said: “We used the Richer Sounds mantra and what that basically means is Customer is King and bringing that customer service into the IT world. We did 10 years of retail and we were successful and had several stores but after that, we really wanted to do more and realized we probably explored retail as much as we could have done.
“So we became what Nybble looks like now, which is managed IT services, software development, audio-visual and very much cloud and cyber – so it’s very much around that philosophy of Customer is King but around more corporate services. So, that was in 2009 and when I say Nybble has two start dates, it really has two start dates.”
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