Software People Stories

In this episode, Mahalakshmi and Lakshminarayan  share their perspectives with Sivaguru on:How they got into ITMaha finding her liking for bug fixing with some development, over development onlyHow a production support role gave her more flexibility with her timeHaving a supportive environment at work and home, and more flexibility with time after having a kidBeing lucky to be on a project that allowed this flexibilityHow, for Lakshmi, while there were changes in the work hours, there was no change in terms of the understanding and support for women colleaguesChipping in to support Maha with some of the child related activitiesHow, working from home has increased the expectations on availability over extended hoursThe growing mutual understanding among peers and teams or the need to balance personal and work demands, particularly while working in a dispersed modelThe significance and benefit of discussions on the nature of work with one’s spouse, even before getting married for better understandingLakshminarayanan Natarajan, has been in the IT industry for 12 years and is currently working as project lead in development work.Mahalakshmi Ganesan has been in the  IT industry for the last 7 years and is presently a technology analyst , working in an application support team .

In this episode, Manju and Rajiv Kuchhal share their perspectives with Shiv on:Manju starting her career with TCS and taking a break to take care of kids, then getting into the social sectorRajiv, about how he got into IT accidentallyHow his knowledge of Pascal got him into IT/Telecom work and later, how he got into InfosysLeaving the corporate world about 13 years ago and being active in the startup and social sector spacesHow Manju wanted to have flexibility at work even while in the corporate sector and how the social sector has given her that optionHer ways to encourage women in her team, to get back after a career breakRajiv talks about the opportunities for women in the startup sector, possibly part time as wellVariations in the clarity of work to be done and pressure between corporates and startupsOpportunities to contribute to various aspects beyond just writing codeManju also talks of the need for a support system when working from homeRajiv mentions how some societal attitudes need to change faster, when it comes to men taking a pause or going slow in their careersAbout any differences faced by women in startups and social sectorAbout encouraging women and enabling them to get back to work, while respecting their freedom to to not re-enter the corporate lifeSupport groups that can help women in transition Manju Kuchhal has nearly 20 years of experience in area of technology. For last 8+ years she has been associated with Dhwani Foundation which works towards providing technology solutions to NGOs. She is currently Trustee of Dhwani Foundation. At Dhwani she works with NGOs in identifying the areas where technology can help their operations, engages with relevant technology solution providers and help them with implementation of such solutions. Before that she worked with Tata Consultancy Services in their software division.Rajiv is an active angel investor and mentor to multiple startups in the social enterprise and technology space. He is an Advisor and Board Member of many such companies. Rajiv spent more than 2 decades in IT/BPO industry, mainly with Infosys group. He led Infosys’ foray into telecom and product engineering services space in early ’90s. He became one of the youngest Business Head and Management Council members at Infosys. He led Infosys’ foray into BPO as a founding team member of Progeon (now Infosys BPO). He was Chief Operating Officer of OnMobile and was part of senior management team instrumental in helping OnMobile scale as an organisation and consolidate its market leadership.

In this episode, Priya and Sridhar Parthasarathy share their perspectives with Sivaguru on:Priya's determination to do MCA, after missing an opportunity to do engineering in BidarStarting her career with Robert Bosch and moving on to Mascot and Wipro as a project leader and getting into ERP solutionsSetting up the EAI practice in CognizantWanting to contribute to the Digital India initiative and taking up a role in NASSCOMSridhar's journey starting at BITS Pilani and a small firm before doing his masters and then to Tata Unisys, before joining WiproNow, a cybersecurity consultant, managing his own venture, Purple TeamHow the excellent support from family has been helping Priya both at home and career, complemented by the guidance from supervisors and managers at workPriya's experience of setting up and growing the EAI practiceSridhar shares how he saw his mother being a career woman and was keen on marrying a career womanHis philosophy of having relationships based on equality and mutual respectThe support he gets from Priya in his career movement decisionsBeing sounding boards from the industry for each otherSridhar also shares instances where he was able to encourage and support women facing some challenges at work, due to demands on their time or commuteHow, Having a woman entrepreneur in the team helps create the empathy needed at the workplacePossible reasons why we find few women in cybersecurityThe impact of working from home on balancing work and personal demandsTheir views on IT as a career choice and mid career questions that many of us facePriya is spearheading NASSCOM's Future Skills initiative with the remit of skilling/reskilling/upskilling of over 4 million people in cybersecurity for India by 2025. She has seen all the opportunities and challenges that women encounter both as an engineer and as a leader. Prior to her stint in NASSCOM she was heading Cognizant's Security practice. Priya is an alumna of SJCE Mysore.Contacts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priya-madhavan-b79a3714/Future Skills: https://futureskills.nasscom.in/Sridhar heads the cybersecurity consulting firm Purple Team, specializing in cloud security. In the 30+ years he has been in the Indian software industry he has been trying figure out what makes it tick. Every time he thinks he has, they change the rules!  Reach him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sridharparthasarathy/Twitter: https://twitter.com/sridhuWebpage: www.purpleteam.inThis podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In our episode, the first of a series to mark women's day 2021, Chitra from PM Power consulting is in conversation with Pratibha Batchu, General Manager heading the India Operations for Bosch Service Solutions Business unit of Bosch and Sirish Batchu, Managing Director of Danlaw Technologies India Ltd.; where they share - How they chose careers in in software and technology From one being rooted in Bangalore, to the other having lived in different citiesTheir thoughts on diversity - of people, places, experiences, and careersBringing empathy to and from the workplace, through their relationship & work experiencesGoing back to first principles when in doubtApproaching inter-generational engagement at home and in the work place, through recognizing workplace diversity, learning and un-unlearning to have conversations at every levelLeadership tips through 3P's, 3A's, empathy, making an effort to understand "why" and enabling an environment to embrace & minimize inequalitiesMaking each day your day & respecting diversity of all kinds - thought, experiences & inequalityPratibha is a Business leader with 24+ years of experience at Bosch, India with a passion for engineering, solution design, problem solving, process engineering and leading teams. She is currently General Manager heading the India Operations for Bosch Service Solutions Business unit of Bosch. She has experience in various roles ranging from software development, project management, quality processes, Head of L&D function in HR for technical competency development and knowledge management to being a leader of business teams in the IT services domain. She has worked on long term assignments at Germany and USA Bosch units, giving her a perspective on intercultural aspects and leadership.She thrives on her interest to learn and lead topics that are challenging, with an opportunity to grow the business - emphasizing on stability, creativity and growth with high customer and market focus. Pratibha is a certified Prosci Change Management Professional, EFQM business excellence assessor and CMMI qualified assessor. She is also a certified graphologist, a calligrapher and an avid traveler in her free time.Pratibha can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratibha-sirish-batchu-322545b/Sirish Batchu is a technocrat who is passionate about bringing technologies to life to solve real world problems. Being a Computer Science Engineer in the Automotive world for about three decades, he believes that Software will entirely transform the future Mobility solutions.He is currently the Managing Director of Danlaw Technologies India Ltd. and responsible for the managing the group companies in India for the products, services and manufacturing for Connected Vehicles and Automotive Electronics solutions. Prior to this, he was the Vice President - Digital Technology at Ather Energy Private Ltd, responsible for the Software and Intelligence solutions for the Electric Scooters. He has led leading pioneering efforts in the ACE (Autnonomous, Connected & Electric) domains through his work at organizations like Mahindra & Mahindra and Bosch & has been instrumental in bringing many new technology concepts/ideas to life. He has a strong foundation in R&D by virtue of his initial experience at Indian Space Research Organization.He is recognized as a Thought Leader and an influencer in the industry in the Connected Vehicles and EVs space and Distinguished speaker in various national and international forums and was conferred the ‘Digital Transformational Leader’ Award by CeBIT India in 2016. He has to his credit, the creation of “Mahindra DiGiSENSE”, a first of its kind Connected Vehicles Platform for the entire Mobility Sector across Mahindra & Mahindra and had major contribution in the development of the first Driverless Tractor in India at M&M.On the personal front, he is passionate about music, an avid singer, movie buff & loves to travel.Sirish can be reached via https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirishbatchu/This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode Naresh Bansal, Co-Founder, Kleeto.com and Next gen paper solutions Pvt Ltd is in conversation with Gayatri from DBS India. Naresh shares his experiences onStarting his technology journey inspired by Rajiv Gandhi’s vision of tech enabled IndiaHard work and Education as 2 pillars that drove his entire family towards successInteresting narrative on his experiences with visa consulate and trysts in USMaking a career in network management and telecom domain providing core and value added servicesFound an opportunity in the Digitization of documents and started Kleeto.comHow connections have played an important role by connecting customers with solutionsLife as a founder where you hold bottom line for staff, customer outcome and technology His passion towards environment and urges everyone to look at taking less from the environment and contribute moreHis dual predicament where business understanding has to be in balance with Technology solutioning in harmonyNaresh 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. 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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naresh-chand-b59461/ This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode,Sivaguru from PM Power Consulting is in conversation with Dr. Pramod Varma, CTO of EkStep and Chief architect of Aadhaar, where Pramod talks aboutHis early school years studying in his mother tongue, MalayalamGetting into Applied mathematics for higher studiesJoining Infosys and learning to address the challenges of teaching academically high performersHis experience in using some of the earliest technology components of the internetHow his research and teaching led him to conceptual thinking and architectural thinking, through a non-linear learning approach for himselfHOw he developed the skills to communicate the big vision to individual contributors too - by thinking and working in a startup modeHis principles to Abstract, Isolate and define interfaces firstMaking sure the interface and automation are sollidBuilding for refactorabilityImportance of understanding the why behind the why behind the whyDesign for a decade, implement for todayHis idea of coming up with an addressable recipient for paymentHis thoughts on Chief architect or design by committee modelHis four tips for an aspiring architectDr. 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode Jerome Ruwe, Master Agile Coach is in conversation with Gayatri from DBS India. Jerome shares his experiences on Starting his career as a Finance specialist and falling in love with technology  Adopting Business Intelligence based software development & recognising power of dataConnected to Jeff Sutherland and adopted SCrum practices and handled soft aspects of hard questionsMeeting Boss Vode and experimenting with what we now know as LESS frameworkDeja vu when working as a scrum master for a universityThe pandemic level setting and humanity to the forefrontHis love of bringing people together, asking feedback in large forums and creating small experimentsHow technology can bring in objectivity and reduce discrimination The shameless self promotion culture and how he feels agile coaches are diluting their brandHolding hard conversations on the success of the organization and how an agile coach equally shares the burden along with the C-Suite membersHaving common goals and keeping your customers and culture at the center makes your endeavor meaningful Understanding points of diminishing marginal returns and how Change agents can structure their work and perspective Always staying honest to oneself, inviting mentors into your circle of trust and staying humble to continue to learn and growJerome 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. 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. 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 & 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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromeruwe/ This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode Liran Haimovitch, CTO and co-founder of rookout is in conversation with Chitra from PM Power Consulting. Liran shares his experiences onWorking across multiple technologies & roles Having a computer at age 6 and writing programs since then2 impacts from his cybersecurity experience - (1) the importance of understanding software & its complexity (2) doing something beyond just writing codeAging systems, lost design intent, and the most common form of tech debtThe 3 reasons for tech debt and what drives fear in engineersHow he co-founded Rookout, born out of his own frustration trying to understand how software worksThe idea of seeing code live, running in the actual environment to understand whats happening, rather than static codeMaking life easier for software engineers & enabling them to see flow of code How Rookout is helping customers reduce cycle time for new builds & adding new codeInfrastructure complexities of cloud and spinning up 1000's of servicesSimplicity in software engineering & the philosophy on building simple componentsThoughts on starting small & working agile & Ways of working for agile teamsFocusing on creating short, frequent feedback loopsA message for anyone taking up software engineeringLiran 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- @liranlastLinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/liran-haimovitch-652bba95/This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

This episode features a conversation between PM Power colleagues Guruprasad and Chitra with Guru sharing his story that includesLove for programming and logicC programming and how an incident set the stage for his sw dev career Experiences as a developer and directly working with customersHis 3 lessons through a serious escalation Key takeaways when transitioning from an individual contributor to a managerWanting to stay technical and how agile led the way to managementHaving an excellent manager as a mentor and role model in his early management daysFinding his Ikegai through coaching and a series of ups and downsHis message for aspiring coaches & people in technologyThis podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com

In this episode PM Power colleagues, J Veeraraaghavan (JV) & Sivaguru are in conversation as JV shares his career journey during the mid-career days, when he moved from one leadership role to another includingGetting the right breaks through his careerManaging projects, taking up middle managerial roles and moving into executive managementGetting exposed to and experience in roadmap planning for productsCurbing the tendency to jump in and act when team members were facing challenges, rather than taking an approach of helping themWhat helped him get over this:Emotional intelligenceBeing aware of self and being empathetic and sensing how others feelHaving a technical backgroundIn addition, approachability and ability to guideOn dealing with managers, when he took on larger responsibilities How he overcame the sudden feeling that one had nothing to do, as a manager, while being responsible overallHis first experience in managing a program and what he learnt from not having prior experienceWhat he realized by inadvertently stepping into the shoes of the project manager and realizing the impact it had on the project managerHis thoughts on luck v/s hard work for a successful managerFour dimensions of success for a middle manager - Engineering excellence; Delivery oversight; Self leadership; Coaching skillsHow executive leadership can enable middle managers to go beyond performance reviewsEstablishing communities of practice to help middle managers His take on managing time This podcast was created on Hubhopper studio. If you wish to start your own podcast for free, visit www.hubhopperstudio.com. Hubhopper is India's leading podcast creation platform. Start your podcast with Hubhopper studio & 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 www.hubhopperstudio.com