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.
January - 2007 - issue > How I Got Where I am Today
Breakaway herder
Aritra Bhattacharya
When B.R. Prabhakar returned with a mangled thigh from distant Baghdad, his 14-year-old son Rahgu Belur flinched at the sight of the wound. The circumstance leading up to the injury was all the more engrossing: the commode in Prabhakar’s Baghdad hotel had cracked and a broken piece of ceramic had taken an affinity for his femur.
His son’s wet eyes notwithstanding, Prabhakar, then the Divisional Commissioner for Mysore, Govt. of Karnataka, went about clearing all pending files, with a pillow cushioning the mangled thigh.
“For me that was the epitome of work ethic,” says Belur, the pain in his eyes having given way to affable admiration for his father. “Since it was a government job, there was no way he could’ve been fired, even if he’d taken a month off, and yet...” Through almost three decades since that day, Belur has carried this poignant portrait in his heart. Over and again, it has helped him tide over his insecurities. Essaying the role of the Director of Engineering at LifeSize Communications, he considers it within his purview to not only drive the product, but also draw it up the stairs and clean it’s peripheries as well. “No work is beyond your dignity,” he says.
The 25-strong team under him at LifeSize’s Bangalore center develops protocol software for the company’s video conferencing equipment, and is working on an IP-ISDN gateway product. Some time in the middle of next year, Belur will see the first major fruit of his efforts—LifeSize will launch its multi-point video conferencing networker, being developed entirely out of India. The occasion, incidentally, will coincide with his one year in the company.
“It has been a period of transition,” he says reflecting on the past six months. When he had joined in mid 2006, the company, following three years of research, had just launched its first product. Its focus, accordingly, was shifting from pure research to a more revenue oriented one, and it necessitated the setting up of the company’s own engineering center.
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