How it all began: it takes a village!

The story of how SPI was born starts when I was in college at BITS Pilani. I decided that I wanted to control my own destiny and be an entrepreneur even though I had been brought up in a household where working for the government was considered to be a great outcome for a career. After all you get a job for life and then a monthly pension from the time you retire till the end! Many years later, one of my cousins asked me how I chose to be an entrepreneur. “We have doctors, engineers, bank managers, scientists in our family – but you are the first entrepreneur. How did that happen?”

Very frankly, I have no idea! However the concept did gain momentum in my mind over time. I had two job offers from campus but I wanted to be near home in Mysuru. To my dismay I found that for a software developer in the late 1980’s there was no professional future in Mysuru. That – to provide employment opportunities to Mysuru engineers – then defined the primary parameter of my still to be launched business.

Still, quitting a very well-paying job and career and jumping feet first into a business is not an easy decision – ask all those IIT / BITS grads who command over 12L annual salary out of college. My guide and partner at that crucial time was my life partner Sophie who encouraged me to take the chance to build on my dream. Not just that, she jumped in as co-founder and helped in areas of the company I badly needed assistance. At that time I was in the US working for a healthy hourly rate as a Powerbuilder programmer. My manager Bill Blackstone, who later on became my business partner told me to start the business and he would be my first client. I took him at his word, quit my job and thus, SPI was born!

My challenge was to find leadership in India for what was conceived to be an outsourcing operation. At that point, my hero – my dad – the one who had helped me combat demons, darkness and nightmares as a child, came to my assistance again for the most significant venture in my life. I had found the first MD of SPI India, Mr. Kamal Krishna Mookerji!

My father threw himself into the venture with passion and energy that put ‘youngsters’ thirty years his junior to shame. He worked day and night and built up SPI from a humble beginning in an incubation center to a 500 strong company working in three state-of-the-art development centers that he personally oversaw the construction of.

Looking back at all the things SPI has achieved, the first few years were the toughest. I was never going to give up either way but people around me made me and SPI successful!