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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

March - 2010 - issue > Woman Achiever

Conquering the Man’s World

Deepika Cariappa
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Deepika Cariappa
For someone who claims to have struggled with mathematics, Sangeetha Phalgunan has got all her calculations right. Starting from the time when she began her career as a Student Counsellor to making headway into the information technology industry and foraying into sales and operation, the calculated risks Sangeetha took have proved to be fruitful. Today, as Managing Director of Serena Software’s India operations and armed with more than 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, and operations, Sangeetha is a success story personified.

As she walks into the room exuding confidence, she radiates strong determination and commitment while narrating her career journey. So, it is surprising when she confesses of being shy and quiet as a child, having had to shout her way to being heard. As she rightly puts it, “When faced with a challenge, you become stronger and eventually overcome it.”

Her stupendous accomplishment in an industry she had not considered as a career option comes as a revelation as she admits that her professional aspirations were limited to the stereotypical ‘doctor-engineer’ dreams that parents had back then. Sangeetha’s first brush with sales was during her association with Brilliant Computers where her job as a student counsellor extended itself to sales unconsciously. Back then, learning computers was not considered very important and the course was expensive. It was up to Sangeetha to convince the parents to let their children take up the course.

It is said that women excel at multi-tasking. Sangeetha is no exception as she managed to add a postgraduate diploma in computer applications to her degree in science and mathematics from Mysore University, even as she kick started her IT stint at Brilliant Computers in 1992. The successful balancing is carried into her personal life too as she strives to give adequate time to her family. As a single mother, she calls the process of instilling values in her daughter the most rewarding experience.
The influence of her favorite writer Ayn Rand is reflected as she expresses displeasure with the perception that the fields of technology and sales are meant for men. She wishes that she could see more women take up sales, but reasons out that women sometimes bring it upon themselves by using ‘women’s issues’ as an excuse for their absence or non-performance.

So who or what inspired her to tread on such an unfamiliar path? Sangeetha hails Srikanth Rao as an ideal person and her professional mentor who taught her how to dream. It was in 1998 when Srikanth took over as the Country Head of BEA Systems India and hired her for marketing communications that her life changed. That was the time when Y2K was the buzzword and BEA had caught up with transaction processing. There were e-links for doing integration and the application was custom coded. It was a two-man operation and Sangeetha’s job was to call up people and talk to them about the 3-tier architecture when people had only heard of 2-tier architecture.

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