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.

Belur went about hiring for the lead positions first. “When a leader creates his own team, there is a far greater sense of ownership and commitment, and I wanted to give that privilege to my directs,” he explains. The onus on, say, hiring one guy with 6 years experience rather than two with 3 years’ experience gave an impression that the ramp-up was slow, but Belur was unfazed. He went about handpicking his team members; straddling between their pedigree, experience and educational qualifications. This experience, he says, was different, notwithstanding the success he had tasted in his earlier role at Motive.

In the aforementioned automated broadband deployment company (it was known as Broadjump before Motive Inc. acquired it in early 2004), Belur was stationed in the U.S., and in his position as a tech lead, played a significant role in helping the company garner $100 million in broadband deployment licenses. In recognition of this, when the company wanted to launch the India ODC shortly after it went public in June 2004, Belur was chosen to lead the effort.

He shifted base to India. Among other things, he had to fight hard the skepticism among the ranks of the company itself; it was early days in the outsourcing era and there were naysayers in the company’s management who doubted the feasibility of an India center. Those early days were rife with fears of India ODC closing down even before it could find its feet.

“It is important to build a wall around yourself at such junctures,” says Belur. He shut himself out completely from all the ‘negative energy’ and concentrated on delivering the specs, on terms and in time. To keep team spirits up, he worked towards carving small independent projects for the India center. By mid 2005, the strategy had started showing results. More work was being moved to India, but rather than erupting into jubilation, the driver of the effort went into a thought parable.

There was less investment in the products sphere, he realized. Motive was building very few generic products, and the focus was turning more towards the software-as-a-service model.

“It no longer offered me the thrill of creating something, and then seeing it come alive,” he recalls. Though he had identified the gap in his career path, it had taken a long time coming. Simply because he had been “too caught up in the company’s success to reflect on his personal career path.” Only after the success of the India center was there relative calm, and the yawning gap came to the fore.

“Outsourcing was turning into a numbers game I was not interested in. Following the software vertical felt more and more like being in services,” he recollects. At that point, he realized that the systems product vertical, offering a combination of delving into hardware as well as software was where his calling lay. Moreover, heeding to his reflective side, he gathered that it would be better for him to join a small organization that would offer him the possibility to meddle in various fields. That was how LifeSize happened to Belur, and he seems to be enjoying his time there.

Father-like
For all his achievements, Belur is not afraid to admit that his career, the very sector he works in, was guided by herd mentality. After having experienced the heady excitement of creation in one of his assignments two years into his career, he had wanted to start his own company. “But then the dot com boom happened, and following the bandwagon, I joined Broadjump,” he recalls.

“Moreover, my father was keen on me pursuing medicine, but I had shut myself out completely.” On his father’s insistence, he had even attended medical classes for a week, but then gave it all up. His eyes were firmly set on the ‘happening IT space’ and engineering was the only way to it.

“Doctors are miracle workers though,” he says with a sigh. They have the ability to impact lives at a more fundamental level, more than techies can ever dream of. “Genetics is an immensely interesting space, but a career-change for me at this juncture is ruled out,” he notes. There’s hope in his daughter though, who he says is interested in medicine.

Unlike his earlier moves of ‘following the herd’, Belur is clear about the way ahead. “There are so many acquaintances on my messenger list whom I don’t communicate with,” he rues. The fast life has snuffed human values out somewhat. A few years on, Belur wants to return to his small town roots, to a more slow-paced life, connect with people, and go back to the thrifty ways of life, away from the indulgences. “Be more like my father…” he trails off.