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Suresh Avantsa
Suresh Avantsa

Suresh Avantsa

Founder, Managing Director - hubVirt Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

hubVirt Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

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Suresh Avantsa's Advice

Compete and collaborate with your peers to improve your skills

Don’t just compare/compete with your peers on salary terms. Compete and collaborate with your peers to improve your skills as well as theirs. Make learning a continuous habit and build a right attitude. To be a good learner, you need a certain amount of humility. Your current organization or the next one that you could be working for, place a value on you based on your whole personality with a lot of emphasis on your skills, attitude and what you can do for them.
Books recommended
Graduates coming out of college should reflect on the skills they bring to the table rather than only about salary. Salary gets balanced at some point or the other in everyone's career. To build those skills and be valued, they need to read a lot of books and articles that gives them an understanding of areas like software development, technologies, current and future trends on technology etc.
To get a brief understanding of software management:
1. The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks
For people who want to start on their own:
1. Bootstrapping: Doing more with less by Sramana Mitra
2. The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig
3. Getting to Plan B by Mullins and Komisar
There are a lot of other books on technology that young graduates should refer to. Reading is a continuous habit.
Making job easier
At each stage in my career, I found that my job has been getting more challenging. And that helped as it kept me on the edge and made me look at my job with respect and a sense of fear. That in turn helped me to adopt a learning oriented approach to perform in my role. It had the natural effect of enhancing my skills.
Views about 'Tech product Introduction is weak among Indians'
It is not right to say that we don’t make a single tech product here. Product development is a risky proposition. With the Indian middle class trying to come to terms with financial stability in the last 15 to 20 years, those risks couldn’t be taken. However, that is changing now and there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity today around products. Also, in today’s environment, it is very difficult to create products that have a global impact on the scale of a Facebook. There might be one coming tomorrow, we don’t know. But, even if we can create products that have an impact on localized economies, collectively they will have a huge impact on the economy. That trend can be seen here now, with so many ready to come out of their comfort zone and take risks.
To improve the environment, mindset of younger lot has to change. In US, lot of techies take pride in working for startups. It is different here. Young graduates should be educated on the merits and upside of working in startups.
Current Trends
The pervasiveness of mobile devices and availability of cloud based services at cheaper rates in future will make them two of the most impacting technologies and their usefulness and usage will far transcend the current scenario. Apart from these, the availability of huge chunks of data that organizations collect over a period will necessitate their analysis to make sense. This would mean increased need for data analytics. Also, in India, as middle class population comes out of their comfort zone, the aversion to risk taking will come down. This will engender more startups not just in IT but in areas like renewable energy and their impact on the economy will be huge.
My advice
Don’t just compare/compete with your peers on salary terms. Compete and collaborate with your peers to improve your skills as well as theirs. Make learning a continuous habit and build a right attitude. To be a good learner, you need a certain amount of humility. Your current organization or the next one that you could be working for, place a value on you based on your whole personality with a lot of emphasis on your skills, attitude and what you can do for them.
My achievement
I take pride in having pursued my higher education while working and also simultaneously supporting my wife actively in pursuing her own higher education goals. I did PGSEM from IIMB during 2004-07 and my wife did her PGP during 2006-08. There was a 1 year overlap in our courses. We had a 1 year daughter by the time I started my course in 2004. While the whole experience of preparing and going through tough academics, with a kid to look after, was stressful, it was fun and gave me a lot of learning too.
Family Background
My father worked as an English teacher (with PGDTE from CIEFL, Hyd) who taught linguistics, phonetics, drama and language fundamentals at graduate level. My mother is a housewife and is a classical carnatic music singer and plays veena. My brother works with LIC and leads and participates in corporate cricket and table tennis tournaments.
We have two children, a daughter and a son. My wife is a graduate from IIMB and is taking care of the India operations of a New York based streaming company.
Goals and Ambitions
I would like to see hubVirt, grow to a strength of at least 30 people and break even in the next 2 to 3 years.
My role model
Lot of people in general, but none that I thought I should follow. Because I knew I won’t be able to. There are many others who I look at in awe and learn based on what is relevant to me. But early on, I should say my father inspired me to read a lot. I completed reading books like 'Financial Expert', 'Guide', 'Painter of Signs' by R K Narayan and 'Ramayan' and 'Mahabharata' by Rajagopalachari and a few Shakespearean dramas, by my 9th std. That was a big thing for someone studying in a government telugu medium school. From my mother, I learnt how to be determined and not to leave any task in the middle. And then learnt a lot from my teachers at various stages.
Being different
Every year lakhs of engineers are coming out our colleges with same degrees. So, I don’t believe that being an engineer doesn’t differentiate oneself from others. The qualities, the values and beliefs, the way an individual conducts himself/herself the ability to stay grounded in success and failure, these differentiate. I should ask myself – can I come out my comfort zone and do something different? Apart from these a little respect for elders and humility will take one a long way.
My important career decision
When I had a choice to join REC, Warangal for doing my engineering, I chose to join JNTU in my hometown to reduce the financial burden on my parents. Then when I was doing my B.Tech (91-95), the general trend in our college was to write GATE and go for M.Tech. I didn’t want to do that, for some reason. I chose to buck the trend and write CAT. That was a big departure from the norm. After working for a couple of years after my higher education I chose to start on my own and try something different. Each of these decisions had their own impact on my life.
My strongest Skill
I think my ability to see the big picture clearly and at the same time being able to focus on the job on hand are my strengths. Apart from these, perseverance is something I learnt along the way.
Managing professional as well as personal life
I don’t want to claim that I have already mastered the art. But I try to keep things as simple as possible and take each day as it comes.
Challenges faced in job
In my current job, the biggest challenge for me is to get to right people who can help me find potential customers and who can work with me apart from the usual challenges of running a startup. Since each day is a new learning experience, I believe that they will keep me in good stead and on a firm footing in future.
Company and job profile
I did post graduation from IIM Bangalore and graduation (B.Tech in Mech.) from JNTU Kakinada. I have been in IT industry for more than 15 years with experience in architecture, design, development, testing, implementation, support, estimations, Function Point Counting, Project Planning etc. I have experience of working in both product and service settings on a wide range of technologies, architecting and building business applications.
I started on my own in late 2008 and started hubVirt Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd. It is a technology startup that provides applications over cloud. The company offers applications in e-Learning and Learning Management space.
• Apart from Software field, my interest spans sports (I played cricket for my district at Under-15 level in X std and express my thoughts on the game at http://cricketbuffs.blogspot.com), politics (I run a website called www.springofthoughts.com), music(For more than 2 years now, I have been learning classical carnatic music) etc.
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