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All-rounders stand out from the crowd on account
of their multi-faceted qualities and skills. Vikram Shah speaks
about his many interests to Abhinav Singh
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Vikram Shah, Managing Director,
Talisma Corporation |
Vikram Shah, managing director of Talisma Corporation,
has always believed in excelling in whatever endeavour he has made—in
his personal and professional life. This has ranged from sports
to engineering to the management field. Born into a Gujarati family
of Bhavnagar, Shah moved to Mumbai at the age of seven. He was an
active member of the school cricket team. Shah was equally inclined
towards engineering from his school days.
He excelled at extra curricular activities and
also in academics. Shah got a special award from the Governor of
Maharashtra for excelling in the subject of Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering in the state. In 1969, he got selected at IIT Delhi,
but was unable to get Electrical Engineering as the subject of his
choice. He had to satisfy himself with Textile Engineering. “I
ranked amongst the first thousand successful candidates in the IIT
entrance exam and so I could not get the course of my choice. Of
course, coming from a textile industry background, my father was
thrilled when I started pursuing textile engineering.”
Shah’s stay at IIT Delhi was however just
for three weeks for he was destined to study Electrical Engineering
as his name figured in the merit list of Birla Institute of Technology
and Science (BITS), Pilani. He was actively involved with the photography
club at BITS and was part of the hostel’s cricket team. Shah
also actively participated at the annual BITS festival ‘Oasis’
where he was part of the organising team. Passing out from BITS
in 1974, he stood second in the Electrical Engineering course.
Shah went to do his Masters in Computer Science
at the University of California in Berkeley, in 1974. “My brother
helped in financing my education at the university. Berkeley was
a great place to learn Computer Science as this was the place where
Unix was being developed,” he adds.
After completing his course in 1976, Shah headed
for Los Angeles ex-ploring potential jobs. Simultaneously, he also
sat for the qualifying exam for his PhD in Computer Science. In
1976, Shah joined Microdata Corporation at Irvine (in California)
and was greatly influenced by his manager, Marv Rubensteine, who
was in the process of developing an operating system. Shah was part
of the software engineering team at Microdata Corporation till 1977,
when he decided to return to India.
Regarding his return he says: “I wanted
to be at a managerial level which was not possible at that particular
time for Indians in the US. Seeing possibilities to rise high at
the managerial level in India, I decided to come back.” Shah
had an offer from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Mumbai. He
joined the company as a programmer analyst. Later he became a group
leader for the banking group and worked directly under director
F C Kohli. “I learnt a lot of managerial skills from him. He
has a superior intellect and I consider him as my guru,” says
Shah. Even today he admires the apolitical wor-king environment
at TCS.
Shah joined Mumbai-based Systime Comp-uters as
their general manager in 1982, where 40 people reported to him.
“The idea was to learn senior management skills with a smaller
team,” explains Shah. His managerial stints continued as Shah
went on to join Tata Unisys as a senior manager at Mumbai in 1984.
His six-year stay at Tata Unisys was fruitful. “I was involved
in the management of the technical groups, business management group
and regularly interacted with the sales and marketing team.”
He got a big break in 1990 when he joined Mahindra
British Telecom (MBT) as CEO, with 100 people reporting to him.
Shah built a team of 300 people during his stay with the company.
He built a strong relationship with British Telecom and with other
telecom companies. He shifted to Bangalore and joined the then Tata-IBM,
and was responsible for their software exports function. After IBM,
he went on to work with Kanwal Rekhi of Novell and was CTO in charge
of Novell’s R&D centre in Bangalore. At Novell R&D,
he was instrumental in building a team of 350 professionals and
the centre generated many patents under his leadership.
Shah started Andiamo Software that was funded
by Cisco in 2001. It operated in the area of storage area networks
(SANs). Andiamo had 60 people in India and 200 in the US. In October
2003, Shah took charge of Talisma Corporation as its managing director.
Based in Bangalore, he is now responsible for driving the company’s
growth.
He likes to spend his free time with his family.
“I like reading management books and some motivational books
by the likes of Stephen R Covey. I am also actively involved in
BITS alumni activities,” says Shah. His discloses his dreams
for the company: “I want to build Talisma into a strong organisation
and also want to nurture small budding entrepreneurs.”
abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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