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Spirit ‘n’ sensibility

Shailender Kumar, Country Head, BEA Systems India, tells Kusum Makhija that it is important to possess the drive to move ahead in life, but one should also develop sound decision-making skills

For a man who believes that one’s attitude decides one’s “altitude in life”, it has always been a journey upwards to higher goals. Meet Shailender Kumar, who took over as Country Head, BEA Systems just a year ago, and the India revenues of the company are already well above the targets set. Kumar began his career with CMC as a hardware engineer in 1988 after completing his engineering from the Institute of Engineers, New Delhi. At CMC, he was working on the maintenance of IBM mainframe computers. A year-and-a-half into the job and he moved to the business development part of the organisation. Ask him why, and he replies, “Just like that, I always found it attractive.” Recalls Kumar, “Actually the company at that time was looking to leverage on the government business and I took it as a challenge to convert small maintenance orders from PSUs into big SI projects. We got big maintenance contracts from government agencies in oil, petroleum and the defence sectors.”

He was handling business development and customer management for their Compaq business when he left CMC in 1997 to join IBM as a senior manager for their government and ISV business. But the stint at IBM lasted for just three months as he moved on to join Microsoft to look after their government sales business. “CMC helped me understand the facets of government business very well and gave me hands on exposure on technology,” asserts Kumar. His six years at Microsoft were quite eventful. Within a year he was given charge of enterprise sales of the complete northern region. As a Group Manager, he had to take care of partner sales and look after the North East region, government and education verticals.

Meanwhile, Kumar also completed his part-time MBA programme from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. “My father insisted that I should do an MBA if I wanted to move ahead in my career. I was not so keen as I was doing quite well without it. But it is only later that I realised that the advice was sound, for the MBA helped me tremendously,” says Kumar.

He joined BEA in November 2003 as their Global Alliance Manager, to develop relationships with their global partners such as TCS, Wipro and Satyam. Again two months into the job and he was promoted to the role of Country Head. The promotion was also significant as BEA converted itself into a 100 percent subsidiary last year by setting up its office in India. The challenges for Kumar were thus immense. He had to not only make sure that the targets that were set for the Indian market had to be met within the first year of its operations in the country, but also ensure that BEA as a brand got the mindshare of the Indian enterprise market.

Needless to say, the challenges have been successfully met. “Moving ahead, I have to grow our India business more aggressively and give a value proposition to my customers,” says Kumar. He wishes to make BEA a big name to reckon with, winning customers and mapping the market. “We have several product launches in the pipeline and also wish to focus on pre-sales consulting to our top enterprise customers,” explains Kumar.

While the last year was growth-focussed for the company, this year it will look to focus more on innovative products and a vertical-centric approach to business. The company claims to have a strong hold in the telecom and BFSI sectors. However, it needs to pull up its socks in the government, retail and manufacturing sectors. The company has a development centre in Bangalore with a headcount of 250 people. BEA Systems also wishes to add more partners in India to the existing two—Redington and Sonata. It wishes to make 100 percent of its sales through partners. At present 80 percent of its sales is through the channel network. “This year will see us target the worldwide market with new vertical specific solutions. Besides, we wish to add more partners as well,” explains Kumar.

Fond of watching sports channels, in his free time, Kumar believes that while it is important to have a spirit to move ahead in life, it’s equally important to develop a sound sense of judgement.

kusum@expresscomputeronline.com