25th ???????? ?????????????????????? & ???? ?????????????????? ????????

Dear Friends,

This is my 25th year in the career journey and want to share with you my experiences and learning. I am not sharing this note with an intention to say that 'it was a great journey’, but to share my learnings & as an expression of my gratitude to my teachers, peers, mentors and more importantly the friends and family, who stood by my side during the toughest times of my career. This story is no comparison of my achievements and challenges to the league of some great stalwarts in this IT field.

I relate myself to an ordinary professional but with extraordinary grit and determination to achieve the targets I set for myself every 5 years. The urge to disrupt my comfort zone and restlessness to learn something new every day is what kept me going in the last 25 years.

I started my career as a Journalist & Research analyst with ???????????? ??????????????, it’s one of the demanding jobs during those times with travel of over 80 kms every day in a two-wheeler and to collect the advertisements and research articles from Micro/Small & Medium size business groups in and around the Chennai Industrial corridor. The experience gave me a good perspective of challenges faced by entrepreneurs, especially the ones in the manufacturing & auto-motives (Chennai is the base for many prominent automakers).

In 1999, I started pursuing my professional MBA degree from ?????????? ???????????????? ????????????, but I continued to work with multiple research firms on the consumer research for some of the flagship CPG companies and memorable association with ???????? ?????????? to empower the college graduates for the employment. This helped me to stay afloat with some financial help & also good amount of knowledge on the CPG product marketing & education space.

I never imagined in my wildest dream that I will be venturing into Information technology space except for that I did couple of computer training courses in addition to 5 different PG diplomas programs in HR & Marketing. My aspiration was to start the career either in creative Marketing or HR domain, but the twist in the tale is that I was picked as a Software Analyst during my MBA Campus placements.

My first job in IT was with Citigroup IT company by name ???????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ??????????????, the company then known for his supremacy in the BFSI Technology domain. I was fortunate to work with some of the stalwart companies in the industry (not just Citigroup) but also with our partners Polaris, Nucleus Software, Kale Consultants & many others. The days were very long, in fact 16 hrs workday was the norm not by enforcement but the sheer enthusiasm of 1000+ professionals working very hard every day to implement one of the marque Siebel CRM BFSI solutions for all of Citigroup Banks in Europe. I played the role of CRM & Middle-ware Integration Analyst. These 2 years of my experience fetched me enough knowledge to tackle some of the toughest CRM projects in BFSI space.

The next stint was with ????, Once again privileged to work with some of the stalwarts in the industry. One of the best opportunities to work with multiple GE group companies starting from GE -Aviation, Energy, Commercial finance, VFS and many others. GE experience really helped me to understand the significance of the processes especially Black Belt quality norms implemented across multiple projects. For almost 3 years, we worked in night shifts to accommodate seamless integration with GE companies in US.

In the first 5 years I was fortunate to have worked with almost 20 different group companies of Citigroup & GE. These 5 years. I consider as my foundation to embrace greater challenges in my professional life.

My shift to ?????????????? ???????????????????? (?????????????????? ???????????? ????????????????) is to escape the nightshift, but the life was waiting to give me another twist, within a months’ time I was asked to take an assignment with Riyad Bank in Saudi Arabia. In fact, later I got to know that no one from the existing resource pool was ready to land in Saudi when they had lucrative opportunities to work in Europe and US on some of the prominent CRM projects. This is really the turning point of my career to take up an assignment of Business Process re-engineering (BPR) without any help from peer as an independent resource to do the BPR exercise for one of the largest banks in Saudi. The experience helped me to understand the cultural diversity of the middle east region, I was fortunate to work with some of the brilliant minds including my reporting manager from EJADA, a Syrian with a Style and noblest Egyptian who lends his shoulder whenever I was depressed & home sick. Once I returned after the successful completion of this project, I had the grit to ask my boss for the incubation of CRM & MDM practice for our company. In the next 2 years, I and my team successfully executed projects across the globe, and I ventured again to Middle East and Asian market to expand our business. I travelled almost to every other Middle East & Asian country. Those travels are still memorable, every 15 days I used to travel either for pursuit or to tackle the delivery challenges. The visas given during those times were short, sometimes the visas were valid only for 10 days.

???? ?????? ?????????? ???? ??????????, ?? ?????? ?????????????????? ???? ???????? ???????????? ???? ???? ?????????????????? ???????????????????????? ?????????????? ???????? ?????? & ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????????????? ???? ???????? ?????????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????? ??????, ???? & ?????????????????? & ???????????????????? ?????????????????????? ????????????????????????. ?? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????????????? ???? ???????????? ???? ??????????, ????/???? & ?????? ???? ?????? ???????? ?? ?????????? .

The most important lesson I learnt, is not to wait for someone to tell me”That you need to train yourself in the next technology to surf the digital wave". We need to identify what is coming up next & equip ourselves to relearn & unlearn. Also Remember to put the organization interest before the self-interest when you lead strategic organisation initiatives.

The next critical phase of my career, I ventured to do something with higher risk and more possibilities to fail than to succeed i.e., in the Innovation and creativity space, I value these 2 as the levers for the organization to grow even during the recession and tough economic conditions. The organizations and teams must constantly innovate to stay in the game specially in IT & Digital world, the companies that fails to innovate disappears from the ecosystem.

I started this journey with ?????????????? ?????? ????????????????, Hitachi is a global conglomerate with over 100+ years of Innovation and pioneering spirit. A world class innovation company in the physical assets world now aspiring to become a digital major with AI & IoT technologies. The experience to work on different OT (Operation Technologies) & marrying them with IT to create world class IoT & Asset Management solutions was the agenda we pursued as a team. Innovation is a Zero-sum game; we need to keep an eye on what our competition is doing and stay ahead of the curve. It does not matter how great our idea is, it is always about execution and organization willingness to adopt that innovation to disrupt the comfort zone.

This journey taught not only about Innovation but also the challenges of working with different groups, political situations and most importantly It doesn’t matter how Innovative you are, but you also need the blessing of the guys in the top. One of the perfect examples of the term coined by Clayton Christensen "Innovators dilemma".

When I decided to move on from Hitachi, I was looking for the options to start something on my own or to take something more challenging , that’s when ?????????????? ?happened and they were looking for someone who can start the operation in India and also to stand up a Solution Engineering team which can help their GTM teams to come up with Innovations solutions. The next 2+ years is a great learning experience. The opportunity to work with teams across China, APAC, Europe & US is worth all the risk and challenges I took as an intrapreneur.

In 2020, we were presented with an opportunity to spun out of Pactera and become an entity on our own. We were born digital and alongside the Covid-19 Pandemic. It was tough, but one of the key turning points in our journey to build a lovable enterprise with a renewed focus to build capabilities in the digital transformation landscape. We focused on Cloud, AI & Data transformation services and Platforms. I took the role of a Chief Innovation Officer to drive some of the key transformation initiatives for Pactera EDGE (that’s our division name with EDGE is acronym for Engineering, Digital, Globalization and Emerging Technologies). From 2020 to 2022, it was roller coaster ride experimenting on multiple technologies and Industry verticals. A big shout out to our Pactera EDGE Leadership team and our dedicated employees we achieved a phenomenal growth in the next 2 years of our launch.

In 2022, We were presented with another opportunity to become the cofounding team of Pactera EDGE and to rebrand our company as Centific (In 2023). It's dream come true for any employee to become a part of the organization as a Co-founding team member. I was presented with an opportunity to be part of the Executive Management team and to guide the organizational growth as Chief Strategy Officer.

I am so grateful for everything that happened in the last 25 years and look forward to another couple of years to end my corporate career in a high note. My vision is to make our organization a most lovable unicorn in the world respected for its Quality and Passion to excel in whatever we do.. I believe I cannot ask for more and be contented with whatever this life gave me.

I believe everyone need to equip themselves to operate in ?????????? ?????????????????? ??????????- ????????????????, ???????????????????? & ?????????????? ????????. They are cyclical in nature, it’s highly impossible for someone to be successful all the time, Its boring to be " Evergreen Hero", The passion to win against all odd is what makes the journey great, So we need to embrace new challenges and try not to stay in the comfort zone for a long time.

The other important and most critical lesson I learnt is to be empathetic and compassionate for the things that you can change. Being Social Champion for some of the social causes keeps us human, No one wants to remembered as Selfish Super Star rather you aspire to inspire many of your peers, team mates and society with your good deeds and share a pie of your success for the betterment of the society.

Over these years, I was humbled by many great minds and professional leaders who went extra mile and taught me some very important career & life lessons.

* ???????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????????, ?????? ???????????????????? ???? ???????? ?????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ??????????????????*

1. Fortunate to travel - 23 countries and understand the diversity of this planet with some great friends across the globe.

2. 50+ accolades & awards from national and International forums for the contribution made by our team (its not an Individual effort)

3. Nearly over 250+ training programs and certifications in different technology and leadership subjects

4. Blessed to be connected to some of the best minds in my Industry, over 23,500+ professional LinkedIn Connections.

5. Could summarize my experience into 3 Life leaderships Books & 200+ Articles. The fourth one in the making "Corporate Soul Stories", A book summarizing my 25years of Career experience and Life Leadership learnings

6. Championed the crowd funding programs worth 2 million USD for the Social initiatives to support farmers, weavers, and natural calamities.

7. Co-produced a Social Impact Feature Film Mitti?https://mitti-thefilm.org/?addressing the need to support farmers.

8. With passion, me & my team helped our customers to transform the respective organizations through technology and digital initiatives. Very fortunate to have worked in more than 250+ major projects & digital transformation initiatives.

9. Created over 50+ Solution Accelerators & Innovative products.

10. Failed over 100+ times in multiple initiatives, every failure was a steppingstone for this successful journey.

No journey is meaningful without companions. I take this moment to share my gratitude to my parents, spouse, children, friends and family they are without a doubt a great catalyst for all the small things I achieved in my career so far.

Stay Blessed, Stay Focused & Stay Passionate with Love & Gratitude

Thank you very much for your patient reading of this article, if you find this meaningful, please share your comment.

???????? ???????? & ??????????????????

???????????? ???????????????????????? ?????? ????*

?????????? ?????????????? ???????????? ???????? ?? ???????????? ????????.