Software People Stories

In this conversation with Shiv, Tarush Aggarwal, CEO at 5X, shares his experience and views on:

• Starting as a software engineer and realizing that his interest lay in the bigger picture
• Working on a benchmarking application that later became an analytics theme
• Discovering the big picture from a lot of detailed data
• How zooming in and out of data lets one discover insights
• Data engineering being the bridge between business and the engineering team
• Handling unstructured data and data warehousing based on SQL
• Unstructured data still having some niche applications
• Having the contextual information on top of data
• Predictive analytics is like building a skyscraper
• It takes time to understand the company’s data to start having effective models
• His trigger moment to turn entrepreneur: being in Bali on the first day of covid
• Why 5X as the name for his company - inspired by Robin Sharma
• An unfamiliar familiar feeling - turning CEO
• Working with people and emotions as well as data without emotions
• Tips for people consuming data based solutions
• Why one should focus on data as a key strategy for any company
• His tips for people considering a career in data : where the playbook is just getting started to be written : #the moderndatastack

Tarush is one of the leading experts in leveraging data for exponential growth, with over ten years of experience in the field.

After graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in 2011, he became the first data engineer on the analytics team at Salesforce.com. Data was in its infancy, and the log metric framework which Tarush built was critical in allowing Salesforce to analyze data across customers and provide benchmarks across different industries and verticals.

Most recently Tarush led Data for WeWork. WeWork leveraged data to be able to grow 10x in 3 years, supporting a footprint of 800+ offices in 120+ cities in 23+ countries with over 12,000 employees, making WeWork one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Tarush scaled the data org from 2 to 100+ and their unique approach allowed them to stay lean while supporting every functional area of the business. In 2019 he moved to China to help establish WeWork’s Asia operations and focus on the hyper-growing Chinese market.

Social handles & reachout email - 

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyOHdgLesV3FesXXl9-8V_w

Twitter - https://twitter.com/DataWith5x

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/datawith5x/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DataWith5x

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/datawith5x

Email - [email protected]

In this episode, Chitra is in conversation with Baiju Joseph, Product Operations leader where he shares events from his career

• Starting out at AIR (All India Radio) as a broadcasting engineer & self-learning programming , developing a few apps for his workplace
• Work break after joining Novell, getting the latest and best system test training, and leadership training, acknowledging the influence of mentors
• Doing various leadership roles at Ariba, handling delivery, setting up quality engineering, dev ops, labs & teams and handling operations as well as facilities for the India development centre
• Being part of the initial leadership team, setting up the right culture and building people focused teams
• How he has assimilated and practiced Agile values and principles through his career and learning how to setup “distributed agile”
• Discussing innovative methods to help companies adopt and realise benefits of agile software development, including street plays
• Leading the quality engineering group at Yahoo, for emerging products, setting up quality engineering team, release engineering team
• Lessons from building products, starting with the “Why” and trying to share the same “belief systems” between customers and producers
• New product evolution experience
• Reminiscing events that didnt quite pan out as they should have and reflections
• Building and ecosystem for tolerance, early failure detection through dev ops chains & microservices, canary practices and deployments, sensing signals, the canary confidence factors, zero touch deployments
• Hire for attitude and train for skills, a learning from his past and other messages for young aspirants

Baiju Joseph Thalupadath is working as a Product Operations leader with a large US telecom company. Prior to that Baiju was working with Yahoo Small Business leading the Quality & DevOps teams. He has around 20+ years of IT experience. Prior to Yahoo, Baiju has experience working with Ariba Inc , Novell Inc and the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. 

Baiju Joseph is a proven Engineering leader with a unique mix of Quality Engineering, DevOps, Production Engineering and Software Development leadership experience. He has extensive experience leading agile, CI/CD/CT, and DevOps transformations. Baiju has built and led global teams shaping the culture of collaboration, customer focus, and velocity.

Baiju is a seasoned Agile coach. Delivered talks on Agile, DevOps, Quality Engineering, Leadership, Website performance etc... in conferences, industry forums, and universities. 

He holds an M.S. in Software Systems from BITS, Pilani, B Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering and Diploma in Management.

Email : [email protected] 

LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/baijujoseph/ 

In this conversation - as part of the Women’s month in 2022 - Shiv is in conversation with Poornima Shenoy, CEO - Hummingbird Advisors.

Poornima shares her thoughts and experiences related to:

• Wanting to be in advertising when she started to work 30 years ago
• Starting her own company - Nexus - into recruitment and getting Wipro and Infosys as their first customers
• How the IT industry grew by attracting people with non IT backgrounds and how passion and integrity were the key skills that helped them succeed
• How her gut has always played a key role in her success - a combination of hard work and some luck
• Not sure if you can develop your gut, no substitute for hard work
• Her career in three phases : entrepreneur, Corporate world - for profit companies, not-for-profit world NASSCOM Semiconductor Association, 
• Her experience in setting up the India Semiconductor Association, a first of its kind in India
• Her perception of differences between software and hardware professionals, without stereotyping
• Entry of women into the sector is not so much of a problem as it is to retain them in the sector
• WFH: problem to find physical space for people who live in shared spaces’ but it is a plus when people needed to run around to manage day to day chores
• There are benefits that come with a corporate job; but, as an entrepreneur, nothing can be taken for granted to enable switching off
• First time entrepreneurship was because she could not get along with her boss
• Women should not hesitate to talk about money: salary, funding, accounts etc
• About her book for women entrepreneurs: wanting to write from her teenage years, but kept postponing it after some other milestone
• Name of the book: ‘Accelerating her business’
• Her experience in getting funding as a woman entrepreneur
• Starting conversations first with your family

Poornima Shenoy Is the CEO of Hummingbird Advisors which works with young companies. She is on the Boards of 4 companies –Dixon, NSEIT, Co-Forge BPM, and Padget Electronics. She is a TiE Charter Member and a British Chevening Scholar. 

Poornima is the Co-author of Accelerating Her Business which focuses on women's entrepreneurship.She lives in Bangalore with her family.

Twitter:@PornimaShenoy

linkedin.com/in/poornimashenoy

Email: [email protected]

In this episode, Gayatri is in conversation with Jaya Vaidhyanathan, CEO BCT DIgital . She shared her story, experiences and thoughts related to:

• How she started her career as an investment banker in wall street and moved to Accenture and HCL to head their large deal space in the financial sector
• With her technology background and her financial acumen, she found her footing in several leadership roles in HCL, Accenture and Standard Chartered
• After holding several executive posts, Jaya looked for opportunities where she can contribute back to the country
• Her organization BCT Digital builds products using the latest digital technologies including the predicting analytics and AI Space.
• She shares her early exposure by her mother to talk on different podiums that made her find it easier to articulate on any topic
• As an entrepreneur, she views her role as dream convertor. When employees join the startup, they are putting their livelihoods at stake and Jaya often feels that any questions that the team is asking needs to be answered
• Jaya uses the term - more you chip the stone, sculpture emerges and that’s a team effort
• Creating a compelling journey and excited about the vision of where you want to take the org is the formula she finds it her mantra
• She shares some stories on how you can create support system and help them be part of your journey
• Having dogged focus despite having struggles is something she learnt, particularly moving from executive leadership to an entrepreneur 
• Hard work is not the same as perseverance. Everyone works hard, Perseverance is when you keep at it when things are not moving the way you want it
• Focus is about building expertise and able to stay the course
• Being an intern has helped her understand the next AI technology or the Web3.0 with a new lens.
• Perseverance, Discipline and Focus along with Tossing aside your Ego is her mantra 
• Smiles come when roadblocks are removed and big goals are achieved. She attributes her mom for being a constant inspiration to where she is. 

Jaya is currently the CEO of BCT Digital. BCT Digital is a global technology company specializing in digital transformation, predictive analytics, and AI space for the Banking and Financial Services Industry. With over two decades of experience in large organizations like HCL, Accenture, and Standard Chartered Bank globally, she has been instrumental in building businesses from the ground up and transforming them into multi-billion-dollar businesses and building team of 60000 + employees. At Accenture, as its Managing Partner for its Financial Services business, she was part of the seeding team to build Accenture India. Jaya has served on the boards of Mahindra Sanyo Steel and Altran. Currently, she serves on the board of UTI Asset Management Company and IndiGrid and NGO boards such as Mastermind Foundation and Kaarwan Foundation. Jaya holds an MBA in Finance & Strategy from Cornell University, the USA, and a BE in Computer Science & Engineering from Madras University, India. She is also a CFA Charter Holder.

Jaya can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaya-vaidhyanathan-26039510/ 

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with Anjali, a 11 year old girl, who has been into coding since she was 7. Anjali shares:

• Her interest in horses and dogs, and other interests
• How she got into coding
• Calling herself an introvert, but enjoying competition
• Using logic to interact with animals
• What she likes and doesn't like about coding
• Creating a tic-tac-toe to play with an AI opponent
• About writing programs alone or with others sometimes
• How she comes up with ideas when entering a competition
• Where programming can be applied
• How she finds time to program.. Do not miss it!
• How she influenced a friend to learn coding
• The pranks she and her friend play during online classes
• What she would love to be known for : making a robot that passes the turing test
• Her experience with using big computers
• How she gets into a calm state of mind - to write programs or even in other situations
• How to get a 5 year old to start coding
• If there is a difference between boys and girls on how they learn coding
• On programming as a class subject and as a hobby
• Her message for older women in IT

Anjali Jayaraman is in Grade 7 and lives in Chennai. She loves horse riding and puppies. She is good at debating. Besides coding, her favourite activity is to create worlds in Minecraft and play video games.

Her project ‘Toothzy’ was chosen for 'Best Design/UI’ in the 2021 California AI + Healthcare Summit Ideathon competition. 

https://www.girlscomputingleague.org/

Link to the project: https://youtu.be/xxwI36-weJs 

Certificate https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LBiLp47trP28jvIfuv_c3Jwlj3nERAQY/view?usp=drivesdk

She got a $700 scholarship for ‘Introduction to Quantum Computing for High school Students’ https://www.qubitbyqubit.org/

Her idol is Warren Buffet and she wants to be either an entrepreneur or an Investor in technology business when she grows up.

Her other projects: https://youtu.be/UlcywVyvWxM Teaching AI to Shakespeare: To AI or not to AI

In this conversation, Krupa, a senior HR professional, shared her story, experiences and thoughts related to:

• Her first job, by chance, to get into IT training
• Moving to software firms later
• Having a natural inclination to be in HR
• Her family [of HR people]
• How the relationship between HR and technical persons has evolved over the years
• Increasing use of analytics by HR
• Data alone cannot be the basis for interacting with an individual
• How the first level or reporting manager is the starting point for HR
• How organizations are sensitive to an individual's natural  preference for a career path to grow
• Addressing challenges in working with peers till yesterday, team members today
• Her experience with managing mergers and acquisitions, from a cultural integration perspective of teams and individuals
• Making rules apply seamlessly with the global and local contexts being taken into consideration
• Need for empathy, listening abilities to make the new employees feel included and treated fairly
• How she de-stresses and some of her hobbies
• Options for technical persons taking up a HR role or HR persons taking up business responsibilities
• The indeed to invest in oneself into the chosen line and constantly upskill

An HR professional with over 20 years of experience. Still excited to learn the ever changing human dynamics at work place.  Working with HCL over 15 years and currently  as Associate Vice President HR heading Industry Software and IoT WoRKS.

A person filled with few hobbies that believe is a must to keep one Alive and enthusiastic. An avid biker,  a poet, an amateur Singer and blog little joys of life.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/krupa-n-s-694655/

In this episode, Gayatri is in conversation with Joseph Wong, General Manager, Asia Pacific & Japan, OpenLegacy and Board Member of AppSolute Ltd talks about his career journey, Joseph shares

• Born in Hong Kong, moved to Canada to complete his studies and worked in the US, Australia and now working in Hong Kong
• Joseph understood early on that he enjoyed working in smaller companies and scaling it
• His consulting  experiences helped him enjoy very different domains starting from gaming to CRM and Middle tier and talent management functional domains
• His success mantra is to understand the domain as deeply as possible and build competencies in self. This ensures that he’s never bored 
• Along with functional domain changes Joseph shares changing from technology to pre-sales to sales and executive leadership roles he has taken in different parts of the career
• Joseph shares that moving continents was easy from the work but convincing family and personal settings
• Joseph set up the Australian team for his firm. He shares balancing the growth and setup the culture with the right people and continuously making the right decisions. He uses the taking the Long Term View 
• He considers himself as a generalist and becomes an pseudo expert in the area
• Every role that he has played has helped him understand the world better and ensuring problems a little better 
• Being in sales has made Joseph to become a likeable person and goes with a mindset of understanding the customer’s problem and solve a bit even if a sale doesn’t happen. 
• Joseph shares that he consciously doesn't over promise and that has helped in forging great relationship
• World is changing from descriptive to predictive to prescriptive in nature. Technology is going to change to a point people will have a lot of time in their hands and work on what they like and are passionate about
• Its important to move out of our comfort zone even if change is hard. 
• If you are not growing, you are falling behind

Joseph has over 20 years of global management, sales and consulting experience, his main career objective to play a pivotal role at the C-Suite while driving hyper-growth for organizations with ambition in Asia. Entrepreneurial at heart, Joseph has a track record of thrice orchestrating the hockey stick growth trajectory of companies in Asia Pacific. The rare combination of logic, creativity and empathy renders Joseph an ideal leader in attracting and motivating top talent to surpass corporate objectives. Joseph loves working in smaller companies compared to large firms and that 

As a thought leader in IT middleware, cloud computing and human capital realms, Joseph is an active public speaker, executive advisor and author of various publications.

When not in the office, he enjoys scuba diving and snowboarding. Mathematical teasers, poker games and reading are his other favorite pastimes. 

Joseph can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephwong/ 

In this episode Shiv continues the conversation with Jacob Kurian, an Indian IT industry veteran and presently Hon. Secretary, The Association of People with Disability, Bangalore.

In the previous episode, Jacob talked about a cold-relationship with a senior executive at Unisys and how that changed. He mentioned a call received from GE to explore the possibility of getting software developed in India.

Jacob shares:

• What happened to the GE opportunity and how that was a significant event for the Indian IT services industry
• His personal decision to return to India in 1993
• Joining Titan Industries as CMO and CIO
• Learning how difficult it is to get users to converge on IT requirements
• From a software services company to in house IT services, where production issues can be seen to impact core business
• His answer to the question: What does it take a techie to become an entrepreneur
• Need for short release, validate cycles and not making good the enemy of perfect

Jacob Kurian was an unintentional entrant into the fledgling Indian IT sector in 1984 and had a front row seat, as it transformed from a largely augmented staffing model to the global powerhouse it is today. Tata Burroughs, later Tata Unisys as the largest MNC in the sector, played a pioneering role in establishing offshore development, turnkey end-to-end software projects and even India’s first financial sector products, decades ahead of Finacle and others. After great success in leading the largest business group for software services in Tata Unisys, he returned to India in 1993 with the intention of leaving the IT sector and looking for new career challenges. He made the radical shift to watches and jewelry at Titan Company. While he rose to CMO and later COO at Titan, he was also tasked with revamping the information systems at Titan. In four years as CIO of Titan, he gained some invaluable insights into the challenges that large end users face in a rapidly changing technology environment. Post retirement, as the Hon Secretary of an NGO, he is wrestling with the challenges of bringing technology to the development sector where tech talent and budgets are non-existent.

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with Jacob Kurian, an Indian IT industry veteran and presently Hon. Secretary, The Association of People with Disability, Bangalore.

Jacob has so many stories to share, that we decided to publish this in 2 parts.

In the first part, Jacob shares

• His early childhood and how his father was a great influence in his wanting to be an engineer
• What his life lessons were, staying in a hostel for further schooling
• His first role related to project management in the construction industry and how he did not like that much
• But, a couple of times later in the career, how this experience created opportunities for new roles
• Taking the role of a product manager in one of the earliest, successful products in the forex and money market space in the international market
• The opportunity he had to wear a sales and marketing cap, even though he calls himself an introvert and set up and streamline the sales activities in the US region
• How he was ignored by a new person who had taken over professional services, who should have been his customer
• And how a large opportunity from GE changed this person’s equation with Jacob

Just as things got more interesting, and Jacob started to share the story of GE’s entry into India for outsourcing, we ran out of time for an episode.

Please listen to the first part of his story in this episode and do not forget to listen to the next episode, that will feature the second part of our conversation - where he shared what happened with the GE opportunity and his transition to a manufacturing company as CIO and Marketing head.

Of course, if you subscribe to the Software People Stories on your favorite podcast client, you will be notified when the next episode is published in a week.

Listen on!

Jacob Kurian was an unintentional entrant into the fledgling Indian IT sector in 1984 and had a front row seat, as it transformed from a largely augmented staffing model to the global powerhouse it is today. Tata Burroughs, later Tata Unisys as the largest MNC in the sector, played a pioneering role in establishing offshore development, turnkey end-to-end software projects and even India’s first financial sector products, decades ahead of Finacle and others. After great success in leading the largest business group for software services in Tata Unisys, he returned to India in 1993 with the intention of leaving the IT sector and looking for new career challenges. He made the radical shift to watches and jewelry at Titan Company. While he rose to CMO and later COO at Titan, he was also tasked with revamping the information systems at Titan. In four years as CIO of Titan, he gained some invaluable insights into the challenges that large end users face in a rapidly changing technology environment. Post retirement, as the Hon Secretary of an NGO, he is wrestling with the challenges of bringing technology to the development sector where tech talent and budgets are non-existent.

Can be reached @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-kurian-9881a510/

In this episode, Gayatri is in conversation with Kartic Vaidyanathan, Founder of Play 2 Learn and visiting faculty at IIT Madras shared his journey 

• Talks about accidentally becoming part of the technology journey due to the sheer popularity of studying in a premier institute 
• Kartic shares the story of becoming a visiting faculty teaching life and coping skills in IIT Madras
• Kartic shares the need for EQ and life skills are needed to build better adults and he also credits for the visionaries in the college to encourage non-engineering courses
• Kartic also talks about the need for one to be having directional awareness of oneself
• Kartic talks about the evolution of quality engineering through his journey in the product and services sector
• Kartic narrates his start up journey being highly energetic and ‘Being an average of the people around you’ 
• Decisions around why he shifted from a product org to a services sector and staying out of your comfort zone and being in the learning zone
• Neutral way of looking at the code was the need that exploded testing and validation services 
• Spent about 15 years in software delivery before chancing upon gamified learning, which he has been practicing for the last 12 years. ( last 4 years full time ). 
• Learning has shifted just like the evolution of testing
• Games provide a fail safe environment and makes a smaller area of learning from each other and creating games to the level of the learner within the same batch
• Learning in a classroom also moving from a command control to a democratic view of the world
• Kartic advocates, everyone to identify their passions and cultivate curiosity and quotes Thomas Friedmans' advice passion Quotient(PQ) + Curiosity Quotient (CQ) > Intelligence Quotient( IQ)
• Kartic also talks about the 4 pillars one should always focus on lifelong and cherish - fitness, relationships, learning+Skill and spiritual growth 

Kartic as Consultant: As a part of LetsPlayToLearn, we help clients from corporates and educational institutions enable joyful learning through the power of play/games. This provides a fail-safe environment, encourages a growth mindset, and provides motivational elements especially when topics are monotonous or difficult. Depending on the problem, situation, and domain, we have help with a variety of solutions that include simulation games, game platforms, board/card games, activity games, and many more. We also have tie-ups with a lot of industry-leading channel partners in this space.

Kartic in Teaching: Co-facilitates sessions on LifeSkills, HHS (Habits, Happiness, and Success) at IIT Madras students. These are much-needed skills that most individuals of our generation learnt the hard way navigating life but are now made available (at least some exposure) to UG students at the start of their careers.

The conversation with Dr. Ramya that is referred in this podcast can be accessed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDwrzD-sux4 

Refernce to Tom Friedman’s advice https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-21/tom-friedman-interview-jobs-learning-future-of-work.html

Kartic can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karticv/