Venturing beyond your comfort zone with Jacob Kurian - part 1

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/