I have been exploring working in a self-paced mode that is conducive to my temperament and provides me with opportunities to develop a deeper appreciation at the grassroots. Fledgling businesses are usually an extension of personalities that drive the businesses. The risks they carry are also more significant, maybe not in quantum, but surpass the realms of just the business. An external perspective, even a nudge, often works wonders with such businesses. It is often thin ice that promises a more enchanting experience. My ongoing engagements are with companies that are engaged in different businesses. A brief on my contribution are a under. Project Consulting & Execution Company – Driving organizational change through identification of skills-demand gap, re-aligning focus to empower the workforce and create growth opportunities, Optimizing business processes, cost control and planning and communication with all stakeholders. The company recorded Increased profitability and improved cash turnover ratio following newer, optimized processes and tools.Boutique consulting firm – The firm was set up with the objective of aggregating diverse skills and expertise required to address the strategic use of technology in organizations. Some of the projects that were worked upon were setting up IT management processes for customers, creating dashboards to provide visibility to each service, setting up of remote management services framework, establishing a successful model for tech-on-demand for locations in North America and Europe, incidence recording, tracking and billing. Merchandising firm – Greenfield exposure in setting up of fledgling unit for manufacture and sales of apparels. Key areas of engagement are financial planning, creation of a business roadmap, formulation of marketing strategies, Business data collation and analytics.

The company was established with the objective of democratizing education resources for self-paced learning. The company’s objectives were centred on extending equal learning opportunities through a non-pedagogical platform and providing content as prescribed by the respective national as well as state education boards. Handled all aspects of the entrepreneurial journey from Product development, budgeting, fundraising, recruitment, digital marketing, and strategic alliances. The platform aimed to bring together various actors of the education community to connect, interact & engage - thereby enhancing Social Capital. It endeavoured to leverage social capital synergies in creating an ecosystem to derive revenues through Social Commerce.

As a consultant to the Indian business of Rio Tinto Diamonds, my role was to provide guidance to the leadership team on infrastructure and applications planning, suitable for the mining industry. I was instrumental in provisioning infrastructure development for the country's business, initiated as the "Bunder Project" based out of the state of Madhya Pradesh, with an intent to begin mining activities for diamonds. I was also acting as the India lead for various IT projects resulting from a strategic review conducted by Rio Tinto in order to divest its diamond business globally. The role requires cross-border collaboration for key decision-making aspects with respect to technology, cost control and technology roadmap for the enterprise.

I was responsible for setting up and implementing the technology framework for Genworth's operations in India. I was instrumental in setting up the data center for Mortgage Guaranty services of the company in India along with storage and data security policy in place for auditing by potential lenders & regulators. Other IT infrastructure building blocks like communication links, a state-of-the-art video conferencing setup, setting up of VPN's, disaster recovery site and processes for business continuity were also undertaken to confirm to the international guidelines. Managed the offshore development of the core application for Mortgage Guaranty with cross-functional stakeholders. Liasion with international teams for global functional knowledge exchange of mature markets and incorporating similar potential challenges through extrapolcation, in the Indian software application.

I joined this company while the business model and landscape were still being formalized through multiple iterations, global know-how and the collective vision of the executive. From the modest needs of a project office to a raging leader in the Life insurance market, the IT systems and processes were steadily built to meet the rapid changes in a industry that till then had seen only one monolith. This meant being on the leading edge of the technology curve, pioneering services to stay ahead of the competition and ensuring a responsive and resilient Information Technology backbone for the company. The uncertainties of the business and constrained budgets in the face of consistent rapid expansion of business ensured that the IT infrastructure and service delivery was done through a lean, highly optimized combination of people, process and technology. Outsourcing was heavily relied upon, less from a cost perspective but more from agility and process maturity angle. Business applications, whether built or customized for the Indian operations were carefully designed to prevent disparate silos from developing. There were many technology firsts of the era that were successfully implemented like virtualized server environment, remote application connectivity through soft tokens, blade servers, IP SAN for storage, packet shapers and web caching for in-house web-based applications, Lotus Notes-based mail setup with fail-over mailing infrastructure, advanced spam filtering, a state-of-the-art data center with HVAC, smart racks, firewalls and a full-fledged functional Disaster Recovery network based out of Chennai were some of the achievements that the team have delivered. What is perhaps most satisfying is that the tightrope walk that each one did during this period provided tremendous learning opportunities that eventually helped shape their respective understanding and careers effectively.