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September - 2005 - issue > People Tracker
People Tracker
si Team
Thursday, September 1, 2005
P R ‘Sekar’ Chandrasekar elevated as CEO, U.S. & Europe, Wipro
“My fastest learning experience was in selling explosives to the coalmines in Ranchi, Bihar and doing a balancing act there between corrupt politicians, miners, dacoits and salespeople while working there in the early part of my career,” says P R Chandrasekar (Sekar) with a guffaw. He was until now leading the European operations for IT services major Wipro Technologies. The appointment as CEO U.S. and Europe comes within a month after the high-profile Vice Chairman Vivek Paul quit. To which he comments, “I don’t think about expectations from me. I do my best and let things happen.” In his earlier roles at Wipro, Sekar has been responsible for global M&A, channel development and the global .net business. Prior to this he had a successful stint at GE Medical Systems in sales. He has a deep relationship with Wipro and was in the Wipro team that made the Spectramind acquisition, the first by an Indian IT company. “Azim Premji is the best listener I have met, be it to a taxi driver or customer and that inspires me,” sums up Sekar a true Wiproite.

Balaji Pitchaikani is the choice of Nomadix as CTO
“Bill Gates is the person to look up to given his flair for using the right technology tempered with business acumen,” avers Balaji Pitchaikani the new CTO of Nomadix Inc., a supplier of intelligent network devices and interconnection services for public wireless networks. Pitchaikani all of 20 years up his career path will drive Nomadix’s efforts towards overall strategy, standards and IP Portfolio. Until recently, he was a steering team member for Sand Hill Angels LLC, which he joined in 2004. He completed his Bachelors in Mathematics from University of Madras and B.E. from Associate Member of Engineering and Telecommunications, New Delhi. He is also the founder of Project Hope International, which is headquartered in Bangalore serving 500 schoolchildren in South India.

Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan to head Yahoo! Research team
Sunnyvale, California based Prabhakar Raghavan will lead research efforts to address complex challenges for Yahoo!, a global internet company including search and information navigation, social media, community, personalization, and mobility. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Raghavan was CTO of Verity, Inc., a provider of enterprise search software. Raghavan is currently editor-in-chief of the ‘Journal of the ACM’. He is the author of a textbook on algorithms, titled ‘Randomized Algorithms’, and has published over 100 papers on algorithms, optimization, web search and databases. Such academic pursuits are amply balanced by indulging in sporting activities like tennis and badminton. Raghavan also holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from IIT Chennai, India. “This was one of the decisions I agonized over and on the whole I feel lucky in making many good choices,” comments Raghavan describing the mistake he might have made had he gone ahead with studying English literature at the end of high school.

Infosys Global Sales Head Basab Pradhan Quits
The worldwide sales head of IT services major Infosys Technologies, Basab Pradhan, has quit to start his own venture, which is most likely to be a BPO firm. He is the second senior official in Infosys to resign recently. In May, Hema Ravichandar, Global Head of HR, quit Infosys after her second stint at Infosys. As head of worldwide sales, Pradhan oversaw the company’s global sales strategy and direction in the more than 30 countries where Infosys does business. As strategic unit head, he had operational responsibility for the retail, distribution, consumer-packaged goods, insurance, healthcare, trans-portation, communication service providers and life sciences verticals. Pradhan joined Infosys in 1994. Prior to joining Infosys, Pradhan held various management positions with Unilever, India. Pradhan received a Bachelors Degree in Engineering Technology from the IIT Kanpur, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from IIM Ahmedabad.

Sling Media appoints Manish Singhal as GM (India)
“Arjuna Ranatunga and Geeth Sethi inspire me in managing teams,” opens up Manish Singhal on management styles. This avid reader of management literature and psychology has been appointed to steer operations and growth for the San Mateo headquartered consumer electronics company Sling Media’s R&D center in India. Singhal brings over 13 years of experience in multimedia software and hardware with several leadership roles in Ittiam and Motorola. At Ittiam, he was the Senior Manager and Head of the Audio Video Systems group. At Motorola (India & U.S.), he was a part of the MPEG committee and made instrumental contributions toward the MPEG-4 standard. Singhal enjoyed being a hardware designer for video compression in the early part of his career. His career turning point was shifting from being a technical professional to a technical management person. He has filed two patents on motion estimation and architecture of video technologies. He graduated from IIT Kanpur in Electrical and Com-munications Engineering.

Seshu Madhavapeddy joins Sipera Systems as President & CEO
Richardson, TX based developer of comprehensive security systems, Sipera Systems’ CEO Seshu Madhavapeddy says, “Sipera is in a totally uncharted territory building products for voice application on the Internet, which is challenging for me.” In February 2005, Sipera completed a $6.3 million round of venture financing, led by Austin Ventures and Star Ventures. Madhavapeddy was formerly Co-founder of Spatial Wireless, a company he helped lead from a fledgling start-up to a major market player in wireless VoIP softswitching. “By far, my most challenging moment was in the year 2000, when I decided to leave Nortel Networks and start Spatial Wireless, a next generation mobile switching company. In hindsight that was also perhaps the best decision I had ever made. Alcatel acquired it for $300 million in December 2004,”states Madhavapeddy. He looks up to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google for their right mix of technological innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

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