In this episode Naresh Bansal, Co-Founder, Kleeto.com and Next gen paper solutions Pvt Ltd&nbsp;is in conversation with Gayatri from DBS India. Naresh shares his experiences on<ul><li>Starting his technology journey inspired by Rajiv Gandhi’s vision of tech enabled India</li><li>Hard work and Education as 2 pillars that drove his entire family towards success</li><li>Interesting narrative on his experiences with visa consulate and trysts in US</li><li>Making a career in network management and telecom domain providing core and value added services</li><li>Found an opportunity in the Digitization of documents and started Kleeto.com</li><li>How connections have played an important role by connecting customers with solutions</li><li>Life as a founder where you hold bottom line for staff, customer outcome and technology&nbsp;</li><li>His passion towards environment and urges everyone to look at taking less from the environment and contribute more</li><li>His dual predicament where business understanding has to be in balance with Technology solutioning in harmony</li></ul>Naresh Bansal is co-founder and CTO at kleeto. He is a Technology professional with 30+ years of experience in technology based companies based in the US and in India. Kleeto provides end to end intelligent solutions for information and document management. kleeto have services and technologies to help customers with indexing, automation, and encrypting flows related to information and documents. kleeto provides document storage with anytime anywhere access to documents with intelligent, and customized access control.&nbsp;Naresh joined workforce in the 90s with a keen interest in software and technology after finishing his B Tech in Computer Science from IET Lucknow. Naresh worked with Pertech Computers, HCL America and River Run Software Group during 1990s on many green field technologies. Naresh joined Cisco systems in 2000 as he decided to join the Telecom and Networking boom. Apart from Cisco, Naresh went on to work with Bay Pacekts, Genband Technologies and Comviva Technologies. After working for 20+ years, Naresh decided to venture into the entrepreneurial world by co-founding kleeto with focus on the document management services for individuals which later pivoted to Document Management Services for corporate. Linkedin: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/naresh-chand-b59461/&nbsp;" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/naresh-chand-b59461/&nbsp;</a> This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

Software People Stories

Decisions, Digital & Dynamics with Naresh Bansal

In this episode,Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Dr. Pramod Varma, CTO of <a href="https://ekstep.org/" target="_blank">EkStep </a>and Chief architect of Aadhaar, where Pramod talks about<ul><li>His early school years studying in his mother tongue, Malayalam</li><li>Getting into Applied mathematics for higher studies</li><li>Joining Infosys and learning to address the challenges of teaching academically high performers</li><li>His experience in using some of the earliest technology components of the internet</li><li>How his research and teaching led him to conceptual thinking and architectural thinking, through a non-linear learning approach for himself</li><li>HOw he developed the skills to communicate the big vision to individual contributors too - by thinking and working in a startup mode</li><li>His principles to Abstract, Isolate and define interfaces first</li><li>Making sure the interface and automation are sollid</li><li>Building for refactorability</li><li>Importance of understanding the why behind the why behind the why</li><li>Design for a decade, implement for today</li><li>His idea of coming up with an addressable recipient for payment</li><li>His thoughts on Chief architect or design by committee model</li><li>His four tips for an aspiring architect</li></ul> Dr. Pramod Varma is the CTO of EkStep, a not-for-profit creating learner-centric, technology enabled platform aiming to provide learning opportunities to 200 million children in India. In addition, he continues to be the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, India's digital identity program that has successfully covered more than 1.2 billion people in a short span of 7 years. He is also the architect of various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) all of which are now working at population scale in India. He has, along with Nandan Nilekani, co-founded beckn.org a non-profit creating open source protocol specifications for hyperlocal commerce. He is an advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Payment Corporation (NPCI), Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), National Health Authority (NHA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and helps with many digital public infrastructure initiatives. He regularly speaks at technology conferencesand is part of advisory groups of various national projects from time to time. Before joining UIDAI in July 2009, he was the Chief Technology Architect and Vice President of Research at Sterling Commerce, now part of IBM. He joined Sterling in 2005 when Sterling Commerce acquired Yantra Corporation, a leading supply chain software company based in Boston, USA. At Yantra Corporation he has been anchoring all technology and architecture strategies and has been key part in building Yantra’s founding team. He began his career as part of the research team at Infosys Technologies and has been part of team that built an Internet banking module and a powerful web application server as early as 1995. Over the past 25+ years, he has studied architectures spanning from mainframes to web and has worked extensively with most programming languages, platforms, and databases. He has researched and taught various courses in Database Tuning, Distributed Computing, Internet Technologies, and Computer Architectures among others. Pramod holds a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science along with a second Master’s in Applied Mathematics. His interests include Internet scale distributed architectures and intelligent systems. He is passionate about technology, science, society, and teaching. This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

Abstract, Isolate, Interface & Automate with Dr Pramod Varma

In this episode Jerome Ruwe, Master Agile Coach is in conversation with Gayatri from DBS India. Jerome shares his experiences on<ul><li> Starting his career as a Finance specialist and falling in love with technology&nbsp;</li><li> Adopting Business Intelligence based software development &amp; recognising power of data</li><li>Connected to Jeff Sutherland and adopted SCrum practices and handled soft aspects of hard questions</li><li>Meeting Boss Vode and experimenting with what we now know as LESS framework</li><li>Deja vu when working as a scrum master for a university</li><li>The pandemic level setting and humanity to the forefront</li><li>His love of bringing people together, asking feedback in large forums and creating small experiments</li><li>How technology can bring in objectivity and reduce discrimination&nbsp;</li><li>The shameless self promotion culture and how he feels agile coaches are diluting their brand</li><li>Holding hard conversations on the success of the organization and how an agile coach equally shares the burden along with the C-Suite members</li><li>Having common goals and keeping your customers and culture at the center makes your endeavor meaningful&nbsp;</li><li>Understanding points of diminishing marginal returns and how Change agents can structure their work and perspective </li><li>Always staying honest to oneself, inviting mentors into your circle of trust and staying humble to continue to learn and grow</li></ul> Jerome is a master Agile Coach enabling several organizations in their agility journey. He’s been in the industry for 30+ years and enabling organizations and powering them with Agile ways of working for 25 years. He has worked as Scrum master, Agile Team Coach as well as Enterprise coach with large firms.&nbsp; He is passionate about bringing agile to companies and truly embodies the message of empowering everyone with his innate style of bringing his genuine self in every interaction.&nbsp; Jerome is an avid speaker in several forums and also works with many fellow agile journey people to uphold the message of staying true to agile values. His methods, drawing from traditional Lean &amp; Agile practices (Scrum, Kanban, XP) as well as scaled frameworks and cutting edge techniques (LeSS, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, Dual Track Agile) bridge gaps which commonly exist between Product and Technology and establish objective measures of performance across critical OKRs (Objectives / Key Results). Jerome’s prioritization of business outcomes and process efficiency gains result in a transparent, collaborative, engaging and profitable experience for my key Stakeholders - from individual team members to the C Suite. Linked in: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromeruwe/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromeruwe/</a>&nbsp; This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

Being One with your Target with Jerome Ruwe

In this episode Liran Haimovitch, CTO and co-founder of rookout is in conversation with Chitra from PM Power Consulting. Liran shares his experiences on<ul><li>Working across multiple technologies &amp; roles&nbsp;</li><li>Having a computer at age 6 and writing programs since then</li><li>2 impacts from his cybersecurity experience - (1) the importance of understanding software &amp; its complexity (2) doing something beyond just writing code</li><li>Aging systems, lost design intent, and the most common form of tech debt</li><li>The 3 reasons for tech debt and what drives fear in engineers</li><li>How he co-founded Rookout, born out of his own frustration trying to understand how software works</li><li>The idea of seeing code live, running in the actual environment to understand whats happening, rather than static code</li><li>Making life easier for software engineers &amp; enabling them to see flow of code&nbsp;</li><li>How Rookout is helping customers reduce cycle time for new builds &amp; adding new code</li><li>Infrastructure complexities of cloud and spinning up 1000's of services</li><li>Simplicity in software engineering &amp; the philosophy on building simple components</li><li>Thoughts on starting small &amp; working agile &amp; Ways of working for agile teams</li><li>Focusing on creating short, frequent feedback loops</li><li>A message for anyone taking up software engineering</li></ul>Liran is the Co-Founder and CTO of Rookout. He’s an advocate of modern software methodologies like agile, lean, and DevOps. Liran’s passion is to understand how software actually works. When he’s not thinking of code, he’s usually diving or hiking. Social Media Handles: Twitter- <a href="http://@liranlast" target="_blank">@liranlast</a> LinkedIn- <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/liran-haimovitch-652bba95/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/liran-haimovitch-652bba95/</a> This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

Crafting Software with Liran Haimovitch

This episode features a conversation between PM Power colleagues Guruprasad and Chitra with Guru sharing his story that includes<ul><li>Love for programming and logic</li><li>C programming and how an incident set the stage for his sw dev career</li><li> Experiences as a developer and directly working with customers</li><li>His 3 lessons through a serious escalation</li><li> Key takeaways when transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager</li><li>Wanting to stay technical and how agile led the way to management</li><li>Having an excellent manager as a mentor and role model in his early management days</li><li>Finding his Ikegai through coaching and a series of ups and downs</li><li>His message for aspiring coaches &amp; people in technology</li></ul> This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

A Pathfinder's Story with Guruprasad Krishnan

In this episode PM Power colleagues, J Veeraraaghavan (JV) &amp; Sivaguru are in conversation as JV shares his career journey during the mid-career days, when he moved from one leadership role to another including<ul><li>Getting the right breaks through his career</li><li>Managing projects, taking up middle managerial roles and moving into executive management</li><li>Getting exposed to and experience in roadmap planning for products</li><li>Curbing the tendency to jump in and act when team members were facing challenges, rather than taking an approach of helping them</li><li>What helped him get over this:</li><li>Emotional intelligence</li><li>Being aware of self and being empathetic and sensing how others feel</li><li>Having a technical background</li><li>In addition, approachability and ability to guide</li><li>On dealing with managers, when he took on larger responsibilities&nbsp;</li><li>How he overcame the sudden feeling that one had nothing to do, as a manager, while being responsible overall</li><li>His first experience in managing a program and what he learnt from not having prior experience</li><li>What he realized by inadvertently stepping into the shoes of the project manager and realizing the impact it had on the project manager</li><li>His thoughts on luck v/s hard work for a successful manager</li><li>Four dimensions of success for a middle manager - Engineering excellence; Delivery oversight; Self leadership; Coaching skills</li><li>How executive leadership can enable middle managers to go beyond performance reviews</li><li>Establishing communities of practice to help middle managers&nbsp;</li><li>His take on managing time&nbsp;</li></ul> This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio &amp; get your voice heard across platforms like Spotify, Gaana, Google podcasts, Wynk Music and more. Click on the link in the episode description or visit <a href="http://www.hubhopperstudio.com" target="_blank">www.hubhopperstudio.com</a>

DOer to Get-it-Done-er with J Veeraraaghavan

In this episode, Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Ujjwal Trivedi and his stories about<ul><li>Wanting to be a scientist, when he was graduating</li><li>Why he had to take up a job, due to family situation</li><li>Getting some inputs from colleagues and managers and recognizing his aptitude for more business oriented roles</li><li>Journey from a software developer to a business analyst and then to a product manager</li><li>Began blogging as a means of sharing his learning of new technology&nbsp;</li><li>Finding that his creativity in writing poems could be channelised at work as well</li><li>How to develop empathy with customer needs</li><li>Never second guess your user</li><li>How to validate your product idea and staying away from candy questions</li><li>Recommended book reads for product managers and on product management</li></ul>Ujjwal Trivedi is a product guy with over 15 years of experience in building software. He is currently working as Associate Director Products, MoveInSync. He has worked on web and mobile products for US and Indian markets as a Techie and moved to Product Management about 8 years back. He loves poetry, reading, and actively contributes to the Indian startup ecosystem as part of <a href="https://headstart.in/" target="_blank">Headstart</a>. Ujjwal can be reached via :<ul><li>linkedin.com/in/ujjwaltrivedi</li><li>@ujjwaltrivedi&nbsp;</li></ul>

Product Thinking Trifecta with Ujjwal Trivedi

Continuing with our 2-part Year End Special, our episode this week features PM Power coaches <a href="https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/gopalan/" target="_blank">Gopal</a>, <a href="https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/srinivasan/" target="_blank">Srini</a>, <a href="https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/sivakumar/" target="_blank">Sivakumar</a>, <a href="https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/sivaguru/" target="_blank">Sivaguru</a> &amp; <a href="https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/parameswaran/" target="_blank">Paramu</a>They share experiences, observations, insights and tips for anyone in a leadership role or aspiring to take up the role, in a dispersed mode of working. Tips include -<ul><li>Becoming situational leaders</li><li>Copiously communicate</li><li>Empathize with individuals</li><li>Dont overdo anything</li><li>Support associates, recognize mental well-being</li><li>Keep the big picture of business, partners and members of your household in mind</li><li>Have fun and remember, we are all in this together.</li></ul>

Coaches' Reflections with PM Power Coaches - 2

Check out my late2020 threw up challenges like no year before, in anyone’s living memory. As coaches from PM Power Consulting, many of us went saw and experienced changes that affected our coaching practice. Through observations, sensing and experimenting, all of which were activated differently, we un-learned and re-learned to respond to our client needs. As 2020 draws to a close and a new year ushers itself in, tune into part 1 of our 2-part Yr End special where we PM Power coaches speak of challenging moments and how we adapted.In this episode we feature Gopalan (Gopal), Vishweshwar Hegde (Vishu), Anantha Natarajan (Anand), Srinivasan Soundararajan (Srini) and Sivaguru (Shiv). st episode!

Coaches' Reflections with PM Power Coaches - 1

In this conversation, Krishna Prasad - aka KP - a coach at PM Power Consulting, shares many of his personal experiences with Chitra. Among other things, he talks of: A mechanical engineer, with Masters and PhD in software Mercedes, Tata, Terex, Delphi Own journey of various roles in the Software industry, experiencing and contributing to various aspects of SDLC His origin story: typical middle class family, aspiring kids to be engineers or doctors; though liked the doctor profession, did not want much of biology and defaulted to engineering Wanted to get into sales [and marketing], appeared glamorous, though at heart i was an R&D person Tried sales and did not enjoy it; but realized that even if you are in development, you need to go to customers, to make the customers feel happy Though in automotive, true software started in avionics; i became a true software developer in Aeronautical Development Agency, developing military standard software Joining Daimler, was again forced, that I am happy about now, into software Aha! Moment - developing software from India, that goes into international products We need to get empathy to feel like a driver, difficult for a youngster to just imagine this Always good to think how someone would actually use the software While a lot of knowledge has been built about, say, braking systems, today, the systems have grown complex and need to work with multiple other systems Only the nature of rigour has changed to more agile ways of working Used to get a few thousand pages of document of requirements, we used to take a few months to get back on how it can be implemented Everyone has now realized that we cannot afford to write so much of initial documentation Rigour is still there, with incremental development - nature of development has changed; everything now is ‘continuish’ Systems getting complex, regulatory requirements are also increasing We have to bake in compliance; no longer a bolt-on Feels model based development will have a significant impact and many freshers are not prepared for that Career advice: develop T shaped skills.. With multiple skills being deep and not just one Question to ask yourself: with your T shaped skills, how can you continuously contribute The benefit of lateral movement across different roles in an organization Internalizing the concept of ikigai - balance passion, mission and profession; magic happens when all these intersect Secret for rallying teams around a leader’s vision: People should know that the leaders are making the right choices What worked for him: Have seen a couple of transformation journeys - they were only partly successful; start with high aspiration and expectation; most often - may turn out the aspirations were unrealistic No matter what, this transformation journey is important There cannot be just one end point - it is a journey - with great learning for leaders and teams Prospects in IT: fantastic area to get in; so broad, you can pick up any area and make a positive impact using technology We have to be really aware that when we enter this technology area; there is a half life of skills; this is reducing dramatically There is no ways of getting into technology areas that will keep you ahead for 305 years Constant need for learning - new skills, honing skills, learn something different Now we have unlimited access to resources, to learn every day Robin Sarma - 5 AM club - daily learning; learn anything, every day

Continuish Ikigai with Krishna Prasad

Sunita Rao and Chitra Gurjar are in a conversation where Sunita shares her stories and experiences about -Being a Hyderabad person, who chose a path of computers through Math & designed solutions for the Nasdaq using VC++ -Cutting teeth in the world of telecom tech working at companies like Nokia, Motorola & Ericsson -Moving from a file systems protocols engineering role into product management and the transition experience -Understanding customers needs via figuring out the problem first & being an ambassador for the company as a product manager -3 focus areas for managing outcomes & transitions from existing business models to new models -The importance of mentorship & developing a product management mindset -Managing customer requirements by doing your homework, understanding needs & hand holding them as you deliver -Defining outcomes & how to monitor and manage them, key aspects that PM's should note -Relationship building as a key skill for PM's as they have no direct control -Balancing the pillars of product network -Her “pay it forward” stories through social causes for caregivers, women & women professionals -A message for listeners on you can do anything & never to give up. Sunita Rao is Senior Director of Product management at NetApp, a leading storage infrastructure and data services technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. She has over 2 decades of experience in managing both rapidly growing startups and mature businesses. She did Engineering leadership roles prior to transitioning to Product Management and successfully led multiple business development and partnership activities across various technology areas. She currently leads “Keystone”, a strategic CEO initiative to transform the systems business to a recurring subscription / consumption model. Sunita, serves non-profits in India that foster creativity and growth in the minds of young girls interested in technology She can be reached via her Twitter and LinkedIn handles. https://www.linkedin.com/in/raosunitha/

Business as Usual or Not? With Sunita Rao

Tune into a chat with a Mental Conditioning Coach Badri Narayanan, Founder of Quantum Leap Sports, with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting covering - -How he translated his interest in psychology to help him transition from software to being a mental conditioning coach -Squashing barriers to mental health -Players interest in data and insights to help manage their performance -Data and psyche of the mind -How he handles context switching across coaching sport, leadership and organizational change management -Managing multiple coaching relationships -Different players having different checklists, maintaining unique footprints for each athlete -Managing the coaching relationship using data to support the process -Data driven approach in psychology -Leadership coaching & material management company consulting experiences -Translation challenges across continental cultures Badri Narayanan is a Sports Psychologist, Mental Skills, Strategy and Performance Coach, Organizational Development Coach and an established Life Coach with more than 16 years of experience in this field. Badri works with a wide range of Athletes in the highest professional level across all sports, notably Tennis, Golf, Racing, Cricket, Soccer, Basketball etc.. He is also involved in Mental Training for sport parents as the family is often highly vested in the player’s development and parents benefit the most in knowing how to train their budding talent! His services are focused in improving their Mental Performance in their desired area of work. This includes understanding the mindset of the participants, their goals, motivation for success, monitoring and tracking their progress. He is also a Life coach and Organizational development coach for corporate and professionals. Prior to starting his Sports and Life coaching company, he worked as a project manager in Gladwell Technologies, Prosper Inc and Ingeo Systems. He did his engineering in NIT Trichy and Masters in Information Systems and a PhD in Philosophy from Utah State University. He can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebelbadri/ or https://www.topmentalsuccess.com

Game, Set and Mind with Badri Narayanan

Conversation with a RPA and MI Lead Anuradha Venkatesh, at Ford with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting on Starting her journey as a civil engineer and built bridges After taking a career break during childbirth, Anuradha started in Geographic Information System as she stepped into software development Anu shares her exciting journey across Java, BI Dev and RPA technologies while solving real problems with innovation and focus Anuradha covers some of the interesting stories on keeping her day enjoyable and having fun with everything you do How she keeps learning at the core even if there was lot of trepidation in the recent leap with RPA and soon in ecommerce Anu shares her wisdom on how she’s chosen to travel for work based on impact that creates for the family and the risk it takes to make the change Anu shares her perspective on Data security and how one has to have a balance while using apps and understand personalization benefits Anu talks about being the first engineer in the extended family and talking about choice of his father to have got her married after 10th standard Shares RPA story - Consider bots as another system in the team without any knowledge of system boundaries. It removes silos in the org and brings short term quick benefits Creating a new frontier using image search and AI ML coming together would revolutionize day to day work As a takeaway she asks everyone not to tag themselves in a specific bucket - be open and continue to explore Anuradha Venkatesh, RPA AI & ML Lead – Ford Motor Company Anuradha has spent over 25 years in the software industry; working on application delivery, business strategy, captive management and vendor management specialties. She started her career as a civil engineer working in Kolkata and Mumbai. She stepped into software development after she took a break due to childbirth. She was a MIS manager for a GIS firm. She joined as a java developer in Hexaware in 2000. She later took up several interesting programs in Java and became a program manager. She joined HP in 2008 as a Sr. program manager and made the switch to ERP and BI systems. In 2016, she joined Ford motor company. She continues in Ford right now. Anuradha is the RPA and ML lead for the marketing team within Ford. Throughout her career, she has been recognized for bringing excellent relationship management and program management capabilities to the table. She’s also known to look at different ways of making delivery models effective. Anuradha passed out of NIT, Warangal. For more details, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuradha-venkatesh-a301764/

Exploring New Frontiers with Anuradha Venkatesh

Conversation with a Chief Digital Officer Sundar Sukavanam, at firstsource with Gayatri Kalyanaraman from PM Power Consulting on Role of CDO has always been there with work done by CIO, CTO and the CEO Digital has made people think of business models differently - Digital office has quite a few roles like Intelligent Automation (RPA), machine first capability, partnerships, evangelization Talks about 18,000 puzzle pieces coming together as an art! Sundar talks about experience as an account manager working in the US for P&L leader Wearing the architect hat (not being an empty suit), powering the enterprise for Cognizant and learnt how to make the most of it Business Operations manager for the insurance team and understood the need for automation and shares stories Sundara speaks about traveling across the globe and themes that triggered moves Enterprise IT is like utility. No one knows when only till it stops working! Think of the users in enterprise IT rather than the sponsors or the conduits Alvin tofflers’ quote on twentieth century literate are those who learn, unlearn and relearn soon Today it has to be fail fast, learn faster Key takeaway for everyone should be to how do you balance what the technology can offer and what Human ingenuity can make happen Sundara Sukavanam is Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Firstsource Solutions. He drives the ‘Digital First, Digital Now’ agenda for the organisation with the focus to help our customers in their digital transformation journey. Sundara leads Firstsource’s Digital Services including Intelligent Automation, Analytics, and scaling Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) offerings. He also manages global partnerships with industry-leading platforms in RPA, ML/AI and SaaS and integrates that IP into their solutions. As part of the CIO’s office, Sundara built large scale enterprise platforms across Operations, Sales and Marketing, Planning and Forecasting, and Enterprise Performance Management, in partnership with the business. Sundara is a business and technology leader with over 24 years of experience in the IT & Operations industry, working with the world’s leading corporations across the Manufacturing, Utilities, Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Media & Information sectors – delivering solutions in Application Development, Core Modernization, Cloud Migration, Quality Assurance, Analytics and Intelligent Process Automation. Sundara has a Master’s degree from National Institute of Technology, India and Certifications from the Stanford Business School. He is based in the US with his wife and teenage son. Sundara is an avid reader and a sports buff. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundarasukavanam/

Moments of Magic with Sundara Sukavanam

Passion and Commitment, something that you will hear throughout this conversation with Pravin Gandhi, a pioneer in the Indian IT industry. With over 50 years in the industry, Pravin is known nowadays for his angel investing and mentorship of entrepreneurs. What you may not know is that his association with the industry started as a software professional! In his journey over the years, you will hear about spotting opportunities, wanting to solve other people’s problems and dreaming big. In this conversation with Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting, Pravin Gandhi talks about many things, including bringing Digital Equipment Corporation to India and closes with the need to embrace Digital! Other things he speaks about include: -Learning computers and programming in the 60s -Being among the first 100 employees at TCS and them moving to Mafatlal Computer Services -Switching out of the software development industry into an OR role -Moving again, soon into a sales and marketing role to find his calling -Leaving Coca Cola, just before they had to close down in India -Converting an opportunity to join Tektronix, an instrumentation company just as they started introducing computerized instruments , to become a promoter of a new company, Hinditron -About creating a pull by approached the end users -How every entrepreneur should be nimble and read to pivot, when it comes to survival of the business -How they were able to establish partnerships to make and sell PCs and solutions -The experience of working with and selling to government officials -Why he considers punctuality and respect for time to be very important -What is a reasonable measure of success, for an entrepreneur -Being a company builder and not a financier -What the right age would be to start up and what it takes to make it work -The role of a mentor, particularly for startups to grow and scale -2 questions he would like to ask entrepreneurs -His experience and lessons learnt from starting a software company to build an ERP solution -We, as a country, needing to dream big and large scale impact -Opportunities in the IT sector for both entry level aspirants and mid-career professionals Pravin Gandhi has over 50 years of entrepreneurial operational and investing experience in the IT industry in India. He was a founding partner of the first early stage fund India – INFINITY. Subsequently a founding partner in Seedfund I & II. With over 18 years of investing experience, he is extensively well networked in investment and entrepreneurial scene and is an active early stage angel investor in tech & impact space. Pravin holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, and serves on the board of several private corporations in India. Pravin is a former President of the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (an IT manufacturers association in India), He is a Past President of TiE Mumbai as well as an Ex-Global Trustee of The Indus Entrepreneurs. He was an Executive Committee of Nasscom in the past. He is on the board of SINE, IIT Mumbai Incubator. He serves on Investment Committee of Aavishkaar Bharat Fund.

Embracing Digital with Pravin Gandhi

Stories of what worked and sometimes what did not, in the course of discovering, designing, developing and delivering software based solutions – as shared by practitioners who went through these situations.