My Story
When I started my career in 2000 and left the beautiful town of Dehradun, the world was undergoing a change. The distances had shrunk, and boundaries blurred. India was opening its eyes to a new era of connected people. The three W’s were the new playground. Fresh out of college with a business degree, I was right there where the Indian web was taking shape, at the headquarters of Indiamart ( Indiamart was to go public in 2019). I can still feel the energy and pace of that place.
Two years later, I was to witness another revolution, this time right in the heart of India's largest telecom player, Bharti Airtel, as part of its enterprise Sales time. It was a perfect place to learn navigating the corridors of India Inc. After all, owning a mobile was a privilege availed by the big business owners or their head honchos. It was fun to see a new gadget take on the world. We had more or less bypassed the ‘pager’ revolution that had gripped the US in the mid-nineties.
No one could have imagined that one day, this innocent-looking device would have us hooked for hours in the coming years. In the next three years, the prices fell from INR 8 per minute to INR 2.50. The launch of CDMA and never-before-heard offers of free handsets changed the ball game, sending the industry veterans back to the drawing boards to revamp their business plans. This was not the end of ‘change.’ The story was to repeat once again when Jio launched.
It was time to learn something new, which took me to two banks, Standard Chartered and Citi. Citibank introduced me to Financial markets. It was not something I had always wanted. Till then, I had never moved within the same industry. This was an exception but with a twist. One taught me the asset business, and the other, wealth management. Both poles apart. Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience.
It was after this that the real adventure started. The Indian startup ecosystem was shaping up, and Institutional investors had started taking interest in our growing economy. I, too, decided to take a plunge and joined a yet-unknown brand with an unknown product. A GPS Navigation device. People used to ask, who would need help getting from point A to point B in a country of over a billion people. It was 2008, and you had a giant like Nokia, who had spent over $ 8 billion to acquire the world’s largest map data company, Navteq, a year before.
And here we were trying to penetrate the world of handset OEM’s by pushing our Made in India, digital maps. Motorola was the first brand which launched a phone loaded with our maps along with turn by turn direction ( Google still had silent maps at tht time). Kudos to the whole team of MMI who stood up and delivered on that vision. There were many more milestones along the way and role kept evolving. By the way “MapmyIndia” had a stunning IPO in 2021 and are doing pretty well. A big shout out to them.
Next was a company which would always stay close to my heart. Two young IIT Grads trying to disrupt camps recruitment and assessment space. A phenomenal time there with young blood who were actually making a big difference in lives of many. CoCubes eventually got acquired by Aon, a global professional services firm.
Then came the big change and I moved to Bengaluru, lock stock and barrel, looking for newer pastures. Simplilearn, India’s biggest professional certification platform was the next stop where I along with the enterprise and global partner team increased the footprint across geographies.
My last and longest association was with Reverie. A Language technology company which is working on democratizing the internet for Indians. Reverie was acquired by Reliance jio around 2019 but we continued to operate as an independent identity. The five years which i spent there would always be special as the cause still remains close to my heart. It is funny that when you believe in the work you are doing, it never feels tiresome.
So after spending close to 22 years across industries, I realized that every organization may have a different culture, rhythm and hue. But what never changes are the group dynamics, business challanges and ever evolving markets. The evolution hasn't dented the core drivers that any human aspires and desires for. It is now my attempt to channelize all my learnings and experience in resolving the conflicts that stem from our social and professional environments via one on one coaching sessions or Seminars.