Hot seat

Always a learner

A tough salesman who has plenty of experience in the fields of hardware and enterprise software, Satyen Parikh, managing director, Borland India, reached the top by learning from everyone, says Srikanth R P

Around the mid-80s when India was just waking up to the PC revolution, an optimistic Satyen Parikh knew that this was the industry in which he wanted to make his career. After completing his graduation from Mumbai University with statistics, he opted for a computer course from NIIT. Even before he could complete his final examinations, he got a call from HCL. Since he was armed with adequate knowledge about installations, the company hired him on the spot. The stint at HCL made Parikh a battle-hardened salesman as he not only sold PCs but he had to face the music when things went wrong. In his two-and-half-year stint at the company, Parikh became the man everybody relied on for solving problems or giving demos of new products. He also launched the Busybee PC in the western region, which taught him how to manage products which were built for the masses. From HCL, he moved on to Hinditron where he sold VAX minicomputers.

But the company that established his reputation and strengths in building up alliances was Novell. Parikh’s relationship with the company started when Hinditron was distributing Novell’s products. After Hinditron became a partner of Digital, Novell dropped the company. Since Parikh’s knowledge of Novell’s suite of products was extensive, the company was keen on hiring him, and did. His stint at Novell saw him building the Netware brand through a series of initiatives. He was one of the few people at Novell who realised the importance of independent ISVs and certification for establishing Netware in the market. India was the first market where Novell positioned Netware as an application server. This strategy saw Novell dominating the network OS landscape with a marketshare in excess of 70 percent. Due to his efforts, Netware became a standard in the banking, government and manufacturing segments.

Now in Borland, Parikh wants to build the company’s image. His team has also built a model whereby the US team works with end customers, and the Indian team works with ISVs to learn the requirements that Borland’s products must address. Parikh has also introduced a flexible licencing model wherein companies can pay for the tools on a subscription basis; in any period, if a company has a change in projects from, say, .NET to J2EE, it can opt for a change in development tools.

While success has not come overnight, Parikh’s philosophy has always been the same—learn from everyone and believe in the goal set by him or the company. For instance, the fact that he was not an engineer never deterred him from making a career in the IT industry. And while he has never done coding in his life, he still knows every minor detail of the business of software development tools. His self-belief and ability to learn has seen him reach the top post of a development tools company. A family man, Parikh has strong faith in God, and draws inspiration from sports professionals.

srikanth@expresscomputeronline.com