A genuine leader affects social change and provides an entire generation with a fresh perspective. Inspirational leaders are always regarded as remarkable individuals, and their name survives even after they are long gone. We have seen several of these outstanding entrepreneurs transform their fields through invention, passion, and determination. These pioneering leaders also ignite the leadership revolution that often creates several new leaders and businesses.
Recognizing the success of such influential leaders, Tycoon Success has shortlisted "India's 10 Most Influential Tech Leaders to Follow in 2022." Featuring as the Cover Story of this issue is the journey of Rohit Gaur, the Managing Director of Infragistics, a world leader in providing tools to accelerate application design and development. As the organization's Managing Director, Rohit has spearheaded Infragistics operations in India for the past ten years. Previously, he served in management roles at Microsoft, Symantec, and Serena Software. With more than two decades of experience in sales, building relationships with customers, and partnerships with large multinational companies, small and medium-sized businesses, as well as Indian government organizations, Rohit helps maintain Infragistics' position as a world leader in user interface development tools and multi-platform enterprise software products and services. With his help, Infragistics has organically grown for over 30 years and now has 250 employees with offices in the U.S., U.K., Australasia, Japan, Uruguay, Bulgaria, and India.
We have also included a few more stories of leaders who deserve to be praised for their immense contribution to the Indian tech scene. Inclusive are the stories of Rajiv Malik, Sr. Director Wacom India; Rohan Karnataki, Founder Hindavi Technologies Pvt. Ltd.; and Packiyanath Sivathanu, CEO and Co-founder of VueData Technologies Ltd.
Founded in 1989, Infragistics is a world leader in providing tools to accelerate application design and development. Several blue chip companies, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Ikea, Bank of America, and Intuit, depend on Infragistics tools to build their applications.
Based in Gurgaon, India, Rohit Gaur has spearheaded Infragistics operations in India for the past decade. As the company's Managing Director, he leads sales and operations for all Infragistics software and services in India. An industry veteran, Rohit has over two decades of experience in sales, building relationships with clients and partners at several large multi-national companies, small and medium-sized businesses, and Indian government organisations. Being a leader of the organisation, Rohit helps Infragistics maintain its position as a world leader in UI development tools and multi-platform enterprise software products and services. With his help, Infragistics has more than 250 employees, with offices spread across the U.S., Australia, Japan, Uruguay, Bulgaria, India, and the U.K.
"I am proud to lead Infragistics' growth in India and provide leading edge enterprise software that solves problems for those working in the fast-paced field of technology. I enjoy building trusted client relationships, forming true partnerships with our customers, helping them tackle new challenges, and meeting their customers' needs in innovative ways," he stated.
Rohit started his first job as a Channel Manager at Symantec Corp in 2001. He continued in the IT space further and moved into Serena Software as an Enterprise Account Manager. Later he joined
Microsoft as Alliances Manager - North India. In June 2011, he started serving Symantec as the National Sales Manager - Enterprise (PSU) before joining Infragistics in May 2013.
As an organisation, Infragistics stays ahead of its competition by encouraging internal innovation in product development and enhancement. One of its latest product offerings is Reveal, an embedded analytics platform allowing clients to integrate analytical capabilities into existing applications to bring real-time data insights to decision-makers. Reveal brings the power of data to all users and enables much quicker data-driven decisions inside the application without switching the context. Embedding Reveal into an application saves time, increases productivity, and helps with a better analytics experience.
Recently the organisation has also built a new digital workplace tool named Slingshot. Clients can use this platform to get the work done in the digital realm and be productive irrespective of their location. The best part about Slingshot is that it streamlines a company's workplace tech stacks by providing remote, in-person, and hybrid teams a single place to collaborate, set goals, make data-driven decisions, share content and communicate within the context they are working on. This revolutionary tool keeps people connected even when they are far apart and transforms the digital workplace with a software platform that can connect all departments, including R&D, marketing, sales, customer support, manufacturing, HR & IT.
The firm's other popular enterprise software products include Indigo.Design, a design-to-code system; App Builder, low code/no-code software; and Infragistics Ultimate, a leading UI/UX toolkit. Rohit says, "Companies like Infragistics, which are clear market leaders, have one common factor -- they all embrace innovation. Not only can internal innovation represent significant cost savings, but it can also successfully originate new concepts and enhance employee engagement. Because we create teams that support innovation and welcome creativity, everyone can be involved in generating ideas, improving those ideas, and prototyping the best ideas."
With the launch of the Infragistics Innovation Lab, Rohit and his colleagues successfully cemented the firm's commitment to its internal inventors and entrepreneurs. For several years, the organisation informally developed game-changing enterprise software products in-house. Presently, Infragistics has a $50 million fund and a formal process for constant innovation, which it needs to continually stay ahead of the technology curve. The firm's Innovation Lab encourages its employees to contribute with a regular stream of insights that could help shape any upcoming innovation. It also empowers internal inventors to experiment with innovations beyond its core UI/UX products without the need to generate immediate revenue.
When the pandemic started impacting organisations and their employees, everything quickly moved online, and employees struggled to tackle the new normal and be productive without being able to collaborate in person. However, Infragistics' global
Infragis�cs|Managing Director
company already had a lot of people working remotely, and the organisation had the needed infrastructure in place to completely shift its workforce online, resulting in high productivity levels.
During the pandemic, many organisations started working to redefine their workplaces to be much more productive for in-person, remote, and hybrid teams. As a company, Infragistics recognised that these businesses were in dire need of a better digital workplace with a single platform allowing their teams to collaborate on data analytics, projects, content, and chat. So, it ramped up its effort to develop the revolutionary Slingshot platform to support firms that were not fully prepared for the pandemic and released this platform to meet the needs of remote, hybrid, and in-person employees.
Picture of the Future
Infragistics is leading the enterprise software market with cutting edge innovations in low-code software, business intelligence embedded analytics, and transformational team-performance software. Its development strategy goes beyond the UI/UX tools to include product development tools, embedded analytics, and digital workplace software.
Infragistics' founder and CEO Dean Guida guides the firm in maintaining its focus on innovation, improvement, and success in the enterprise software tools market. Over the past three decades, Infragistics has demonstrated a passion for excellence and takes pride in the quality of everything it does. In the future, it will continue to develop solutions for its clients that are rooted in a deep and thorough understanding of their needs.
Guida Founder & CEO
Established in 1983 in Japan, Wacom is a global leader in the pen display and tablet market for creative users across the planet. The brand Wacom is derived from the word ‘Wa,’ which means Harmony in Japanese. Wacom products are widely used by the creative communities, including; illustrators, animators, graphic designers, editors, fashion designers, and industrial design professionals.
“Led by its current Sr. Director, Rajiv Malik, Wacom India also provides digital ink solutions for its wide range of partners at global level Wacom is providing Ink solutions to various partners using and producing tablets and smartphones. However Wacom India is focussed towards developing Creative, Education and Digital Signature solution markets only.”
Rajiv started his professional career with an exciting opportunity to promote Professional Recording Media products in Film and Television Studios, News and Entertainment Channels, Independent Documentaries, and Film Makers.
He says, “As I networked with the industry, made many good industry friends, while interacting with some of the amazing and highly successful Creative Directors, Artists, Technical Heads, I felt the need to go deeper to understand how technological advancements are helping the industry to unleash the creativity.”
This was the crucial time of transition for the industry from analog to digital. It eventually enabled Rajiv to switch to the core industry of A/V professionals, where core broadcast and digital
imaging products have been an integral part of all film and broadcast studios. With Electronics Engineering as a base qualification, Rajiv has always been very passionate about working closely with the Creative Community and Technologists. He has also pursued a master’s degree in Business Administration at a later stage.
“What I learned while joining Wacom is that it’s not a typical IT trading company.”- Says Rajiv. Creativity flows in Wacom’s DNA. It designs products with a strong intention of supporting creative professionals. He adds, “Diversified culture, strong leadership, values, and ethics, with creativity at the core, were reasons enough for me to join this amazing company. This very well resonated with my previous work background.”
Rajiv’s most ambitious project is transforming traditional Wacom office set-ups into Creative Experience Centers. He plans to redesign these spaces to reverberate with creative minds, not just for aspiring artists but also for the internal team members. He feels Wacom’s customers must get the feel of its products by simulating an artistic environment. Along with the metro cities, Rajiv also plans to expand Wacom India’s presence in smaller cities and towns to provide the best experience to the widely spread creative communities with diverse backgrounds.
Rajiv says, “Though the Pandemic was unfortunate for all, however on the brighter side, our business saw exponential growth.”
The pandemic increased the practical usage of pen tablets in the education sector. During the lockdown period, academicians discovered how digital pen tablets and displays play a critical role in remote teaching and learning. It helped people realize the power of digital tools, helping professionals and students communicate much more effectively without missing the natural flow of knowledge transfer.
Soon distance education became much less cumbersome. With more accessible and effective education, many of the ed-tech groups came forward and established themselves very quickly. Rajiv further adds, “The Media and Entertainment industry saw a big shift towards OTT. Access to Creative as well as Academic Education, and WFH for Corporate sector gave a big boost to our business.”
Rajiv feels the market is changing rapidly, even faster than it ever did in the past. With the ever-changing situation, most institutions that have already experienced the advantage of digital tools are constantly working on setting up Hybrid set-ups/classrooms for a long-term perspective. He believes the market has evolved to a large extent and will continue to evolve in segments like education, film, and television production in the coming years. Also, content creation for cinemas is bouncing back to its earlier levels after two consecutive years of slowdown.
Wacom plans to further develop and introduce its state-of-the-art products and cutting-edge technologies to support artists express their creativity safely. Rajiv says, “Supporting communities by introducing easier to use, highly accurate devices to support creative expressions will remain at the core. There’s a growing need to secure the precious content created by artists, which is being made possible with the help of blockchain technologies.” The company wants to further expand its presence and strengthen close two-way communication with its clients via various platforms. By demonstrating its latest products, solutions and the best hands on experience to budding professional, Wacom’s direct presence as a legal entity in India makes a lot of difference.
Hindavi Technologies, led by its founder Mr. Rohan Karnataki, is a US based IT Services & Product Development company. Over the last 14 years, Hindavi Technologies has been at the forefront of providing IT solutions and has completed over 1000 projects for more than 300 clients globally.
Since its foundation in 2009, the organization has ventured into Product Development in 2015 with its flagship product Xporience, an Event Technology Platform for various exhibitions and conferences. It is now one of the most sought-after products for global event organizers spread across Dubai, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Till date, Xporience has worked with many coveted clients, including Dubai Expo 2020, MCI(Switzerland), and dmg::events, amongst others.
After the overwhelming success of its flagship product, Hindavi Technologies has launched its second Product - CareerFirst Edutech, which is India’s first 360° degree Career Design Platform for upskilling and making India Employable.
Rohan and Hindavi Technologies has been recognized with awards like “Top 10 Mobility Companies in India - 2018”, “Best Product Development Company - 2019”, and the “Best Entrepreneur Award - 2021”, “Best Companies to Work for - 2022.”
The organization leverages its massive domain and technology experience to provide various services like IT Services (UI/UX, Mobility, IoT, Cloud Computing, and Digital marketing), IT Solutions (Application Development, Product Engineering, Quality Assurance, and Testing, Startup MVP, IT Consulting, and Enterprise Product Development),
Cyber-Security Consulting (Assessments & Audits, Compliance, Infrastructure Security, Vendor Assessment, Cybersec Awareness), Remote Staffing(Staff Augmentation, Offshore Staffing, IT Outsourcing, RPO Services, and Contract Staffing).
As the founder of Hindavi Technologies, Mr. Rohan Karnataki realized pretty early that India is one of the youngest countries, with over 62% of the population in the working age group and 54% of the population below 25 years of age. He feels the present era of technological innovation provides an excellent opportunity to leverage intellectual capital and positively impact Indian society.
“My main motivation to start a business venture is to work with such bright young minds and create innovative products in the field of education, healthcare, and core technology.” - he says.
A first-generation techpreneur with more than a decade’s experience in the IT industry, Rohan is a Computer Science graduate and holds a management degree from Australian National University, Canberra.
A serial entrepreneur at heart, Rohan started his first business at the age of 8 by selling popsicles at a local bus depot, which helped him learn the value and meaning of time, money, and an honest day’s work. Later while studying in college, he ran a successful facility management service, employing seasonal farmers who were out of work during the off-season. He also curated an entirely commission-free marketplace for farmers to sell their products directly online, eliminating middlemen and increasing farmers’ profits.
Later in 2011, Rohan Co-founded Colortronic Studios Pvt Ltd, a Pune-based creative agency encompassing strategy, design, technology, and media. He launched 100 Days of Walking in 2020, a global health and fitness movement aimed to motivate people and inculcate walking as a part of their lifestyle. Rohan is also the Founder of CareerFirst Edutech, India’s premier Ed-tech 360° Career Design Platform.
Rohan kickstarted an Intrapreneur Program in the organization, where employees come up with their product ideas, and the company encourages them to work on their ideas by giving them the necessary creative independence to work on a minimum viable product (MVP). Rohan is also making giant strides in upskilling these intrapreneurs to help them understand various aspects of business and become successful.
Additionally, Rohan’s new edtech startup CareerFirst Edutech assists students and employees in identifying their best career roadmap and pursuing the proper education and skill-sets to get their dream jobs or start a business, depending on their aspirations, values, and interests. CareerFirst provides technology training and upskilling to graduate students and also provides full scholarships to deserving students.
The 2020 pandemic affected most of the industries to a great extent. However, Rohan recognized this as an opportunity and created a roadmap to enhance the employee skill sets, create various new future-ready products, and a post-pandemic growth roadmap.
He helped employees to get trained in the latest technologies, who were also allowed to publish white papers related to the IT sector and other domains related to various products of Hindavi Technologies.
In order to upgrade the employability skill sets, Hindavi technologies also conducted various non-technical workshops within the organization. Also, regular brainstorming sessions helped its teams to discuss new product feature ideas, and employees were also rewarded for their valuable contributions.
As a result of these activities, the organization started an entirely online Event Technology Platform for Event organizers, which empowers online exhibitions and conferences and seamlessly integrates with their existing product offerings. Led by its founder Rohan Karnataki, Hindavi Technologies also ventured into its second product CareerFirst, an ed-tech platform addressing the employability gap in India.
Rohan feels this is the most exciting time in the technology industry. Innovation is being made in
various fields, including AI, ML, Robotics Process Automation(RPA), Quantum Computing, VR, AR, IoT, Blockchain, and Cyber Security.
He says, “There is a huge gap for Product and Service Providers in this trillion-dollar economy. Considering the current startup eco-systems and govt. policies, I believe that the current market scenario opens up a huge business opportunity for the millennial generation.”
When it comes to the future, Rohan aspires to be at the forefront of technological innovation as a technology evangelist. On the other hand, Hindavi Technologies also plans to create various value-based products in the healthcare and education sector by using technologies like AI/ML, AR/VR, and Blockchain.
To achieve this, the firm has an R&D team that works in tandem with educational institutions, industry mentors, and innovators. Hindavi Technologies also has strong connections with the investing and startup community to kickstart various new projects and create the new unicorns in India.
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An engineer by heart, Packiyanath Sivathanu (Packy), the CEO and co-founder of VueData India, started his journey in the software industry more than two decades ago, just after graduating as a computer science engineer. He was always inspired by the startup culture and was drawn by firms that wanted to do things differently in terms of providing technology solutions to address customer problems.
Initially, Packy worked for several startups in India, which provided him with enough opportunities to learn, do something challenging, and wear many hats while performing different roles. With his eagerness to work more closely with clients, Packy relocated to the U.S. and worked with organizations like Microsoft, TMobile, Amazon, Sequent, etc.
After nearly a decade of working in the U.S., a personal situation forced Packy to return back to India. Along with Muru Ganesan who is Director, and CEO, of the firm’s Seattle office they founded VueData headquartered in Seattle, WA., with offices in Chennai and Bangalore, India. VueData provides end-to-end IT services to some of the fortune 500 companies globally, focusing on Retail, Media, and enterprise markets to achieve business transformation by leveraging industry insight and technological expertise. The organization helps its clients by using the latest technologies and solving complex problems. Outside of its service offerings, VueData has also a suite of products, ‘Tentkotta,’ an OTT platform specifically made for South Indian films, db-DAAS, an end-to-end Database Release automation tool and go-boss.com which is an one stop solution to create your own white labeled streaming platform / service.
Packy feels that even though people talk a lot about innovation and leadership but when it comes to giving employees the needed room to innovate and grow, there is always a hush-hush and pushback. Often this fear of failure gets ingested, which in return stops the proper thought process of some of the brightest minds in the business.
“At VueData, its always employee first. we give them the freedom to be heard. We do our best to ensure that part of our culture at VueData is reflected in everything we do.”- says Packy.
“It is imperative that not just the leadership but everyone in the organization understands why and how we do what we do. We preach and follow that top-down throughout the organization in anything that we do at work and outside.”- he added further.
Even with so much negativity, the pandemic did bring in some very positive aspects for the organization. Challenged with a steep learning curve, it was during these challenging times that employees understood the importance of proactive communication not only with the clients but also within their teams to stay up-to-date. Eventually, this proactive communication led to increased trust between team members and leaders regarding how they work together and who has their back during critical times. Above all, this increased the overall empathy towards colleagues by quite a few notches.
Sivathanu CEO & co-founder VueData Technologies Ltd, India
I would like to give credit to our employees who supported us all through the pandemic. They trusted us, and they helped us take care of our customers without any impact on the business. ”
says Packy
All these together have increased VueData’s overall IT operations efficiency by up to 30 percent. However, the most challenging part for companies was retaining talents during the Great Resignation period. Packy believes that VueData failed on a few strategies, but the HR team quickly learned from the mistakes, realigned themselves, and hit the ground running to adjust to the new norms.
Packy feels the IT industry has successfully sustained the uncertainty that the pandemic bought alongside. However, despite rapid growth in digital transformation and technological innovation, there are also signs of a slowdown in business initiatives. In a broader sense, this could be seen as a measured approach adopted by the organizations to keep their eyes on the market, which has a high chance of plunging into recession.
“Positively, this might be seen as a market correction post-uncertainty adjustment rather than a market collapse. It’s a wait-and-watch game while being conservative and planning to sustain, at this point, I guess.”- he added.
As a part of its technology focus, VueData is heavily focused on enabling a few of its clients to move towards the Metaverse coupled with blockchain technology. At present, some members of the organization’s advanced technology team are focusing on creating revolutionary products to help some of its clients transition smoothly into a virtual 3D world. Packy explains that moving into a virtual world may seem fancy, but that opens up new concerns about data privacy and security, where VueData is currently focusing on to grow its practices and solutions even further. Additionally, the firm has plans to expand its team in South America and various other countries in Asia. Within India, the company has seen a lot of success in hiring talented individuals from tier II and tier III cities.
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I have had the privilege of being the country manager for Poly India & SAARC for over 3 years and one of my biggest learnings so far is : become comfortable with being uncomfortable. As a business leader, you will have to be decisive, take tough decisions (and stand by them) and see how you motivate your team to achieve the best outcomes.
If I could impart five tips and learnings from my personal leadership journey, it would be :
Take that giant leap of faith. You never know; it might just be worth it, and the decision to make that jump may end up changing your life and career.
Often, growth happens when we step outside our comfort zone. Have conviction and self-belief in yourself and your abilities, and take a giant leap of faith when you are presented with an opportunity. It maybe scary at first and you may even end up failing, however, you would have had the satisfaction of having tried.
2.
Give in your 100%, no matter what you are doing
Like the Bhagavad Gita also says, “The wise man lets go of all the results, whether good or bad, and is focused on the action alone.”
I want to take this a step further and modify it by saying, give it your 100%, whatever actions you perform, personal or professional, give it your all, and whenever you do this, despite the fact that you may not get your most desirable or ideal outcome, the results still won’t be half as bad because your hard work and efforts never go to waste.
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4.
To be a good leader, you need to learn to lead with your head, heart, and hands.
The head to envision the future and the priorities that are needed to succeed, the heart to inspire and empower my employees and the hands to ensure innovative and agile-execution capabilities.
Even when no one else is watching you, or there is no one to support you or push you to deliver your best, you owe it to yourself to discover your own potential. When you learn to motivate and push yourself without any external motivators like a manager watching over you or even when there are no sales numbers or deliverables that are attached to your performance, is when you have become a true leader and a great performer. 5.
Be decisive, loyal and committed
As a leader, you will have to sometimes make tough decisions. Make these decisions and stick by them. There is no shortcut to hard work; learn about loyalty and commitment and embody its principles. Be loyal and committed to your organisation, customers, and partners. Always put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think about their pain points and how you can support them. Be committed not just to your own professional growth but also to the organisation’s overall growth and success.
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Remember, in the end, we will only regret the chances that we didn’t take ”
ANKUR GOEL
