On a fine morning, a news item in the newspaper caught Malini's attention. On the front page, in bold letters was a news that India had successfully conducted the test flight of the long awaited surface to air missile – 'Akash'. She felt a tinge of excitement as she remembered that a long time ago this was one of the projects she had worked on.

Way back in 1985, Malini had joined Indian Institute of Science (IISc) after graduating in Electrical Engineering from BMS Engineering College. She was one of the select few graduates who got the opportunity to work on Defense Research and Development Organization’s (DRDO) indigenous defense project. She worked on simulating the trajectory of the missile so that it reached the target correctly. Nostalgic about her days at IISc, she remembers her excitement when she initially joined the institute. She was in awe of her surroundings when she saw the desktops, operating systems, advanced program languages, and many other large computer systems. "In the college we had not even seen a desktop. We worked only on microprocessors and used assembly language. At IISc FORTRAN was the language used at that time. It was a relief for me because in assembly language one had to write hundreds of lines of code but in FORTRAN one could straightaway write the programs as it had compilers, libraries, and other tools to one’s aid," Malini says excitedly. But most of all, she was happy to have had the opportunity to work on a prestigious project and serve the nation.

But three years later, Malini had to leave IISc and move to Mumbai due to personal reasons. After working for DRDO she wanted to do projects that were meaningful and would contribute towards the development of the nation. To chase her desire to make a difference, she joined CMC, which largely catered to domestic customers. Her experience here was quite different from the research oriented work she was involved at IISc. "Usually defense R&D projects take years to complete but at the same time one has the freedom to work and learn here. One is not bound to any time limits. On the contrary, corporate life is a fast paced one. All projects have timelines within which they have to be delivered. The customer is constantly breathing down one’s neck. However, unlike research projects, here I could see faster response on the work that I did," Malini explains.

One of her major achievements at CMC was developing an application for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the backbone of Indian economy. She developed an application with which the fund transfer from RBI could be automated in a secure method by electronic sign verification. She also went to RBI branches in major cities and helped them adopt the application. The project won her a special recognition award at CMC. Another project she undertook made a huge impact on the fourth estate, through one of the largest media houses in the country – Times of India (TOI). Earlier, TOI used teleprinters to receive news from all over the world and simultaneously print it. The machine, however, was extremely noisy and it involved a lot of work for the journalists to sort the news and work on them. Malini and her team developed an application that enabled journalists to receive the news in their systems and they just had to give it a final shape. Once the application was implemented, teleprinters were history and the staff's efficiency increased many folds.

After CMC, she did several other projects like these at Equinox and DEC. In 1999, Compaq acquired DEC and they offered Malini an opportunity to set up the Microsoft Practice for the Indian cluster. This involved working on Internet based technologies. Internet was relatively new in India at that time and it was an uncharted territory for Malini. Moreover, she was under a dilemma whether to join or not, because she was not sure whether working for a global company would fulfill her sense of purpose in contributing towards the country’s development. But eventually, she looked at the opportunity in positive light. "Working for a global organization meant exposure to a multicultural environment, beyond one's own comfort zones," Malini explains. The exposure also helped her broaden her outlook and thinking. "Soon I realized that since I was handling the Indian cluster, I could bring global best practices to the Indian customers," she adds. Over the years, she also feels proud that her work is making a difference to not only Indian customers but to many others globally whom she may not have met at all.