Sign in to follow 's advice will appear in your account when you log in. Follow specific Community Members and never miss out on their views and insights. Build a group of Members who you want to listen to.

Email: Password:

Don't have SiliconIndia account? Sign up Forgot your password? Reset

Ask Rajeev Gupta for Advice

If your advice request is relevant to other Community members, our Editorial team may choose to send this request to all Experts to attract a wider range of answers and share them with the Community. Rest Assured, we will protect your privacy (unless you recommend otherwise).

Advice Request

Submit Cancel

Rajeev Gupta

Next Member >>

Rajeev Gupta

CEO at Avankia LLC

Avankia LLC

Rajeev Gupta is a member of:

My current job description

I am currently the CEO of DBSync, a Cloud Integration Company. We provide a cloud platform to integrate Cloud applications to other Cloud or On-premise applications, for example CRM’s like Salesforce or MSCRM to Accounting packages like QuickBooks and Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Leadership qualities

●   Lead by example - your team needs to look up to you as guide, friend and mentor
●   Be numbers driven - I have found that if you focus on a number, all strategies comes together
●   Don’t take excuses
●   Breathe

Ensuring growth

I usually carve out Saturday mornings to spend on research and read up. I try to make sure that I am not working on the current stuff, rather thinking about whats to come - be it technology, HR or others. I also have an Advisory board that helps me in educating and decision making. Its really helpful, because when you are running a company, you often find yourself alone, and certainly a person outside the company helps.

Advice to upcoming leaders

Innovate and take Risks, and all of the above.

Connecting right dots

You are bound to make mistakes, its life and no one is perfect. You should learn from it. The key is to surround yourself with folks who can understand you and what you are trying to do. Always reach out for expert advisers or coaches.

Influenced by

Reena Gupta - My wife, she motivated me to jump into entrepreneurship

Steve Jobs- he innovated, took risks and did not take an excuse.
Jack Welch - While working for GE, the experience left me to be numbers driven and making sure my team understands it too. color:black;background:white;mso-highlight:white;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;
mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">

Handling grievances

Intentional listening is the very best way. Many solutions are found and appropriate decisions are made only when employees have a chance to air their issues, ideas or grievances. Also if you work and understand their problems, try to work it out. Its much cheaper and effective to have an employee than to lose him. All my team members have a direct line with me and I do have one on one meetings couple of times a year.

Important career decision

Leave my well paid job with McGrawHill to get my MBA at Owen, Vanderbilt and jump into entrepreneurship.

My view on India technical development

I beg to differ. There are a lot of new startups brewing in India. We have a center in Bangalore and everytime I visit, I am impressed with the people I connect. There are products like FusionCharts (Kolkotta) which is widely used. Another one is Dim Dim (bought over by Salesforce). There are many. Perhaps the question should be that there is not a “Big Success” story. I feel that its just time that someone does it from India (or China or Japan or …).
What I see is that folks are getting more comfortable in India to take risks. They are leaving their jobs to try things. This is an “Incubation” phase. I know companies like Intel Capital are investing in Indian venture. Things certainly look interesting ...

My family background

I was born and brought up in Ranchi, now part of Jharkhand. Studied in DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir (same school as Dhoni’s !!!), went to BIT Mesra for my Engineering.
My wife, Reena Gupta, is also an Entrepreneur and runs Avankia and TargetRecruit.net, both quite startups and successful. I have two children, Rohan and Ritika who keep my live interesting.
My father, Prem N Gupta, is also an Engineer, retired years back as the GM for Bharat WestFalia, a coal mining equipment manufacturer