cube chat | Balaranjith Thangakunam
Dare to Dream “To survive in today’s competitive landscape, every new initiative will require IT, and a higher role will be a natural transition” says Balaranjith T, GM-IT, Atul Ltd By manu sha r m a
M My success
mantra
Failure is not the worst thing to happen
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itnext | n o v e mb e r 2 0 1 2
ost of us dream big. In reality, though, dreams remain only dreams. But Balaranjith T not only dreams big, he also ensures he is on the right path to success. Bala (as he is known) dreams of becoming a Chief Strategic Officer (CSO), as IT drives most operations of a company today. Without IT, no new company initiatives can survive in today’s competitive landscape. Hence, the role of a CSO will be a natural transition for me,” he says, and adds, “My career path and achievements indicate that I am on the right path to becoming a CSO shortly.” Bala has over 12 years of experience in the IT field at top-notch companies: 6 years with Infosys, a year with Bearing Point (PWC Consulting), 3.5 with Yahoo! and 2 with Atul Ltd. Post schooling, Bala wanted to take up Automobile Engineering, but with his good
ranking, he got into Computer Science & Engineering. “But after my first year in engineering, I got so hooked on to programming and developing applications that I have never looked back. Today, I enjoy coding and debugging it.” After BE, Bala got into Infosys through campus placement. As a software engineer, he was part of the enterprise software team that grew from 30 employees to 9,000 in just 6 years. In 2006, Bala moved to Bearing Point (PWC consulting) where he was responsible for the development of enterprise software (ERP) for Big 5 companies. Later in 2007, he moved to Yahoo Labs in Bangalore and was responsible for shifting the entire development work from the US to India and also setting up a captive centre from the ground up. “The shifting of the entire development centre to Bangalore resulted