Category: NEWS

Emerging Trends And Promise Of Cloud In The Post Covid Era – Part-1

September 1, 2021

This is a point of view by the authors to give an overview of the cloud market and emerging opportunities in this first article of a multi part series on cloud computing and application modernization as we explore and reason what has changed in the past 18 months and what does the post-pandemic era have in store for the cloud vendors and customers.

Introduction

The pace of digitization accelerated nearly 7X globally during the pandemic, as huge portions of the economy moved to digital channels and these trends are here to last. Cloud infrastructure is a critical enabler for this digital transformation and in the post pandemic world this trend of cloud adoption is only going to accelerate. As per a study by Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecasted to grow 18.4% in 2021 to total $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion in 2020. Cloud is projected to make up 14.2% of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1% in 2020.

However, a more granular view gives a better assessment of what happened, and where the trend lines are headed. In a report from CloudHealth, here are a few takeaways:

Total cloud spending increased in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the leap in 2020 was not huge. This was partly owing to the free services offered by cloud providers during the pandemic and the cost optimization measures enforced by organizations in a bid to control operational expenses. However, in 2021 a significant jump of 18% is forecasted by Gartner in end user spending on cloud services.
Spending on compute services, which is by far the biggest spend, actually decreased in the same period
Container usage saw a big increase in 2020, even in verticals that saw decreased total cloud spending. Increasingly enterprises are looking into moving applications from physical hardware and virtual machines (VM) into containers and deriving benefits such as increased portability, faster application development & deployment etc.
Cloud vendors and their System Integrator partners are focussed on helping customers derive the maximum value from their cloud investments, with strategic consulting and operational offerings.

Why Cloud and Why now ?

The pandemic has brought to the forefront a number of fundamental shifts which are driving growth in cloud adoption, few examples:

Increased focus on business continuity planning & agility in the business
Increased demand for e-commerce, e-learning, telehealth, video-on-demand etc
Explosion in demand for remote work, hybrid work will continue to be the preferred model in the post-Covid world.
Dramatic swings in demand cycles increasing the importance for pay per use models.

Conversations with enterprises on the rationale for moving to the cloud is now much broader than simply saving costs & having a better infrastructure. It is now about cloud making the business more adaptable & agile, about enabling innovation, reinvention and growth. Public cloud providers continue to make huge investments to enhance their platforms and move up the stack providing key capabilities that enterprises had to earlier build themselves. This is allowing enterprises to focus on capabilities that truly drive innovation & differentiation in their business. There are still some enterprises in the early stages of cloud adoption that are migrating workloads to the cloud solely for cheaper compute & storage. They are doing a simple lift & shift of their on-premises workloads to the cloud and are often disappointed with the ROI unless they include other critical aspects of the cloud migration such as automation of IT processes, leveraging cloud native technologies, cloud ecosystems and marketplaces etc.

The trend of companies adopting multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategy continues to accelerate, almost all large enterprises are deploying workloads on more than one public cloud while also keeping some data on private clouds if necessary owing to data residency/sensitivity, regulations, latency and other reasons. Per an IDG Cloud Computing Survey, over half (55%) of organizations who have embraced cloud, currently use multiple public clouds, with 21% saying they use three or more. This is further corroborated by analysts at IDC who project that more than 90% of enterprises will use a mix of public, private and on-premises environments by 2022. That said, the disruption of traditional IT caused by cloud computing is here to stay and we should be moving from fear-uncertainty and disinformation (FUD) and chaos during the pandemic to a rapid and orderly adoption and refactoring of traditional applications in the post pandemic era.

Looking forward

Human species haven’t stopped innovating since the early days of human civilization. The need for automation has been increasing historically since the Renaissance and days of the industrial revolution when the printing press replaced handwritten manuscripts. We are said to be in the fourth wave of industrial revolution since 2010 but the post Covid-era could be labelled Industry 5.0 ! The remarkable pace of adoption of innovation and automation across industries especially with a customer service component can certainly be attributed to COVID induced lockdowns and fresh thinking and introspection when almost within weeks companies digitally transformed and devised strategies to enable remote work for most of their employees without missing a beat. That would not have been possible without the progress in Internet, cloud computing and automation technologies in the past two decades. Since 2020 we increasingly come across exciting real life success stories of Customer Service Innovation (e.g. Call Center AI ), Voice based user experience interfaces (e.g. Chatbots) and a plethora of AI/ML use case adoption (predictive maintenance, autonomous driving, advanced robotics etc to name a few). The common denominator is advancement in cloud technologies and its rapid adoption. The cloud market is growing fast and as various analyst reports have stated and is already huge but we are just getting started and may only have touched less than 10% of its potential. We will deep dive further in subsequent articles in this series.

About the Authors:

Himanshu Kapoor is a Customer Success & Professional Services Executive with extensive background in leading technology led transformation for clients and client facing teams at leading organizations like IBM, Cisco Infosys and currently Google. In addition to his expertise in Go To Market Strategy, he brings a deep understanding of public cloud platforms like Google Cloud & AWS.

Piyush Malik is a veteran of data-driven business transformations across multiple industry domains having served customers worldwide & leading multicultural teams spread over 40 countries and helping with digital transformation, cloud adoption and applied data science/AI/ML journeys. Having served in strategy, management consulting and application software leadership roles at PWC,IBM, Cadence Design in US as well as product management with Tata group in India, he is currently a SVP at SpringML, a Premier Google Partner, besides being active with several industry bodies and non-profits including ASEI

This article is based on conversations Aditya Guthey, an ASEI Silicon Valley chapter member and a career coach has had with Sania Jain for ASEI Youth Corner. A short excerpt is here ASEI has a partnership with MoonshotJr – a Silicon Valley based startup that accelerates youths’ path from STEM education to entrepreneurship. Click to avail special offers for ASEI community.

Tech, Networking And Inspiration- Asei Partners With Iit Bay Area

August 31, 2021

Conferences are usually avenues for networking but during the pandemic most events went virtual and we started to miss the camraderie. As the world is opening up, slowly in-person events are making a comeback and ASEI Silicon Valley chapter had an opportunity to partner with the IIT Bay area alumni association on Aug 27th for a full day of learning and networking.

What value did it offer? Well, if you combine learning cutting- edge topics along with meeting industry colleagues and reconnecting with college alumni networks all in one, then that event becomes exponentially valuable.

The IIT Bay Area team did a fantastic job putting together an event taglined “Reshaping the World” that brought together over 50 speakers – some of them very well known names in the industry. At the event, the ASEI Board was represented by Piyush Malik, Surbhi Kaul and Student member Nidhi Mathihali. Along with Surbhi hosting a fireside chat, we also got to hear from past ASEI Awardees : Unicorn creator & entrepreneur of the year 2020 Jyoti Bansal and Intrapreneur of the Year 2021 Google TV GM & VP Shalini Govil Pai.

Read the insider scoop and key takeaways in this candid blog by ASEI President Piyush Malik

Aerospace Is Hot – A Conversation With Dr Shreekant Agrawal In Engineering Tales #6

August 26, 2021

Dr Shreekant Agarwal is a quintessential ASEI “Lifer” In this conversation with ASEI President Piyush Malik, he shares his professional journey as well as origins of his ASEI Involvement till date. He also shared how he selected his engineering branch and followed his passion for Aeronautical engineering and how he has been involved with design and development of Flight systems, defence fighter jets, missiles as well as now very cool urban air mobility autonomous machines. It was fascinating to learn more about his passion for his chosen field where he uses principles of maths and physics on a daily basis on the job till date!

His journey from India to US started from IIT Kharagpur where he earned a BTech degree and came to US for Masters at University of Maryland. He went on to get his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan.

His involvement in ASEI started in 2005 when he planned for and chaired a successful National Convention in Los Angeles held in 2006. He was an executive board member of the Southern California chapter from 2004 until 2009. He served as the president of the SoCal chapter from 2007 to 2009. He also served as the treasurer and board member of the ASEI National from 2010 to 2011, and then as the chairman of the ASEI National from 2011 to 2013. Since then, he has served as an advisory board member.

Dr. Agrawal has been in the aerospace profession for 4 decades. For his contributions to the industry, he was selected Engineer of the Year by the Chinese Institute of Engineers, USA,in 2004.

He is currently the head of Flight Technology at the Urban Air Mobility Division of the Hyundai Motor Group. He joined at the beginning of 2021. Earlier, he was at the Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems in Redondo Beach, CA, where he worked for over 6 years as a director of Flight Sciences within the Vehicle Engineering directorate. In that role, he provided functional excellence in terms of people, processes, tools, and products. Prior to joining NorthropGrumman, he worked at the Boeing company for about 29 years, where he had a variety of assignments in functional, program management, and technology management, and was a technical fellow since 1996 in the Boeing Research & Technology Flight Sciences organization,managing and working on supersonic low-boom research projects, strategic planning for technology development for future products, and corporate initiatives.

He also spoke about an interesting stint where he has served as the chief operating officer and director of operations for a joint venture between Boeing and Tata in the Boeing Defense Military Aircraft Division.

He was the program manager for the Boeing Defense Engineering common process development and implementation across all sites and new programs. He also worked in the Boeing Defense Air Force Space Systems engineering management organization, where he led the processes and tools effort (systems engineering, program management best practices, CMMI, etc.) for military satellites, and was the sector technology integration leader.

As a leader of the High-Speed Aerodynamics Technology group and as a leader of the NASA/Industry High Speed Research program, he led the aerodynamics, flight controls, stability control, laminar flow control, propulsion/airframe integration, and sonic boom research efforts.

His contributions range from developing and applying advanced aerodynamics/computational analysis and design optimization methods for military aircraft, supersonic commercial transport, hypersonic missiles, and space launch vehicles. He has contributed to the development of products such as F/A-18E/F, T-45, Air Refueling Tanker, hypersonic missiles, and several development programs. He has 12 publications in the archival journals, over 50 papers in various conferences, and 1 patent on supersonic aircraft design.

The conversation also touched on the latest space industry trend- Space Tourism and the commercial and entrepreneurial opportunities it offers. He shared his thoughts about the euphoria on opening up space tourism with Sir Branson and Jeff Bezos going onto space in July and all the hoopla about us becoming a multi planetary species. He had a clear message for audience wanting to explore Space Tech- “it’s red hot and get involved!”

During this discussion Dr Agrawal also emphasized the role that organizations like ASEI play and their importance and why should folks join hands with ASEI. This very inspiring discussion went from zoom to youtube live chat to an extended audio chat session on Clubhouse, the latter being the latest “experiment” in social media that we at ASEI are exploring for spreading our message to a wider audience. Would love your feedback on our programs, especially this episode of Engineering Tales!

Covid Warriors : An Account Of Volunteerism And Resilience By Divya Ashok

August 23, 2021

Volunteerism and resilience amidst trying circumstances and lessons learned from COVID

While the world watched, India went through a horrific 2nd phase of COVID earlier this year, taking over 450K lives. Almost everyone lost someone they knew, if not multiple folks; and the impact on families was devastating. However, there were several positives that came out of this disaster around resiliency of the human spirit and allyship.

While doctors and nurses are truly national heroes, it was heartening to see several companies and individuals unite to offer their help through money, time and partnering with NGOs in this time of need. Salesforce has always been a champion of business being the greatest platform for change. Employees are always empowered to champion causes and take the lead in showing up for our communities. This is precisely the spirit that led me to reach out to our leadership to create awareness and build a strategy to help our colleagues, their families and the community in India.

I started a small taskforce with colleagues given our personal impact. Little did we know that it would grow into almost 1300 volunteers in a few days! We ran a 24×7 global taskforce to run several initiatives. We built and staffed a volunteer hotline using our platform for our employees, their families and friends. Our brave volunteers curated on the ground information and handled every call with the utmost care. We delivered multiple planes filled with life-saving medical equipment and supplies. We ran medical sessions online to create awareness and help people where we could at home. We raised several millions of dollars to be utilized by our vetted partners in the region and we saw the impact. Our leadership prioritized employee well-being and safety and made every effort (moved deadlines, discounted hotel rates and provided wellness benefits) towards this goal.

While the onslaught was brutal, we fought back bravely. Several volunteers faced personal loss and despite their circumstances, they showed up for each other. We will always remember sweet memories of those we lost, but more importantly we must carry forward the allyship, sincerity and kindness showcased into our daily lives. It is a shared purpose, along with values-based organizations that will take us forward as humanity.

Divya Ashok is an ASEI Life member and serves on the board of Silicon Valley chapter. Professionally, she is a Vice President at Salesforce. Divya is a leader with 12 years of experience building and scaling global initiatives from the ground up. As Vice President of Strategy and Innovation, she is charged to lead the strategy around Salesforce’s India business and champion initiatives around India in San Francisco. Prior to her new role, Divya was in Product Management. Her teams led Salesforce’s efforts around scale, where she championed and delivered over 500+ unique product enhancements. She led product readiness for 50+ of Salesforce’s largest and most complex customers globally.

Divya’s passion for the empowerment of women and children led her to co-create the Salesforce Women’s Network. While she was Global President, membership increased by 350% to over 9,000 allies and expanded to 48 chapters globally. As for her accomplishments, Divya has been selected to join Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen global community 3 times to exchange ideas and perspectives with a select group of trailblazing women from across the world.

Mentoring Corner: Part 2- A Practical Approach To Success! By Dilip G. Saraf

August 10, 2021

Do you have a passion for engineering or just doing a job? —- A practical approach to Success! By Dilip G. Saraf

In Part-1 of this series, Dilip explained his observations having worked with thousands of clients about the distinction between having a passion for engineering versus just doing a job. In this part-2, he explains the model he has developed to explain how actualization drives passion.Once you embrace this notion, you’ll change how you look at your career and how you manage it!

The starting point for this model or framework (shown in Figure here ) is identifying your aptitude (your genius or your uniqueness). A dictionary defines aptitude as both a natural or acquired capacity or ability. This definition in my mind addresses both aspects of someone’s aptitude. So, it is alright not to know what your natural ability is, but if you pursue something out of curiosity, interest, or mere serendipity and you acquire that ability by whatever means, then what you have acquired can be defined as your aptitude.

As this figure depicts, Aptitude directed with deliberate effort allows you to develop a skill that gets increasingly better with greater effort. To ratchet this effort further, Toil makes you achieve Mastery over what you are pursuing. Here Toil refers to what Malcolm Gladwell calls “putting in 10,000 hours of focused effort.” In Sanskrit it is called Tapasya, which requires 12 years’ highly concentrated effort on one pursuit (this can far exceed Gladwell’s 10,000 hours’ requirement, which I view as typical). The result in this model is the Mastery of your subject (in Sanskrit it is called Sadhana). Thus, the work you put into your talent has a dual effect: First it helps you develop your Skill and then with Toil, you go on to Master it. (Each element in this figure is capitalized, for ease of identification in the accompanying Figure even though it is a noun in everyday usage.)

While Toil is a singular pursuit, just focusing on improving your technique, Effort entails a broader perspective: Developing new relationships with other professionals, researching different techniques, understanding how others are practicing their craft, going to events where other players showcase their craft, among other avenues. Thus, Effort and Focus result in Growth that comes, both from a broader perspective and from learning how true Growth requires a multi-dimensional effort.

Creativity stems from working on your Skill to deepen it. Using trial-and-error, intuition, experimentation, and design one can engage in Creative pursuits to further their Skill and get incrementally better at how they manifest their Skill.

Similarly, a state of Flow is reached when Growth and Inspiration work together to propel your abilities to greater heights. The concept of Flow was proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Mihi Six-ent-mihi) a Hungarian-American psychologist. In his model of getting to a highly focused mental state one constantly elevates their Ability to the level of challenge they meet, and when this reaches a state of equilibrium, they reach the state of Flow, where things happen magically. Navigating through the elements on the left side of the center in this figure, Purpose and Focus play a strong role in how you develop your talent further. At the intersection of Focus and Purpose is what comes to you as your Inspiration. But mere Inspiration without Toil cannot allow that Inspiration to culminate into any meaningful Impact that others can see or feel.

Thus, Toil plays a dual role: Once in transforming your Skill into Mastery of that Skill and then in transmuting your Inspiration into an outcome that creates Impact. Additionally, once you discover your Purpose, Toil results in actualizing that Purpose. At the center of all these intersecting circles in the Brand. A Brand is a culmination of all these factors that uniquely come together for the world to recognize you as a thought leader of a worthy stature to be reckoned with. It is apparent that passion is nowhere in this framework; it is because it plays no part in manifesting yourself as an actualized professional. Passion is defined in a dictionary as an object of desire or interest: something that commands one’s love or devotion.

This implies that passion has a strong emotional component to it. Anyone can display passion about a topic, but that does not mean that they have an inherent aptitude to help them excel at it (the topic). As the model in Fig shows, anyone can work on their natural ability, build a Skill, and Master it through the many elements outlined in that model.

So, after reading this approach to career management, if you are still waiting to uncover your passion to get going on the right career path, you may want to rethink and start going with something you know you are good at and then applying yourself meaningfully with Effort, Toil, and Focus! It worked for me in all my five careers and for my clients working with them as their career coach; it can work for you, too!

Good luck!

About the author:

Dilip Saraf is a highly sought after career coach who keynoted at ASEI’s 33rd Annual Convention last year and seeing the value ASEI provides, joined as a professional member of our SiliconValley chapter. An IIT and Stanford alum, he has leveraged his experience going through five di

August Newsletter Is Out!

August 5, 2021

The August 2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent in the beginning of this month to all those who are on our mailing list till July end. In case you missed it, here is the web version. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society!

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.

In case you are not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.

Billionaires At Play: Stay Clear Or Get Engaged In Spacetech?

July 20, 2021

Having made enormous fortunes on Earth, billionaires are now racing each other to space. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest person on the planet was one of four “space tourists” on his private space company Blue Origin’s inaugural human spaceflight that successfully completed on July 20, 2021, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson to speed up his own planned space trip and launch himself into space, nine days before Bezos on July 11th .

Fellow tech billionaire, and third richest person on Earth, Elon Musk is often the most vocal about his space company, SpaceX, and his plans to make humans an “interplanetary species.” Bezos, however, is just as obsessed with outer space as the Tesla founder is. The billionaires concur that it is humanity’s destiny to settle the stars. And, without much real public debate, private space corporations appear to have settled the matter: space will be humanity’s next frontier.

As exciting as it is to see private entrepreneurs blast off for space, the burgeoning race between billionaires Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has its fierce detractors. Proponents say these efforts will whet the public’s appetite, help expedite technological advancements and pave the way for economies of scale that will make such journeys relatively affordable. Let’s dig a little more into both sides of the argument.

Affordability and Economics : According to Jon Cowart, a longtime chief engineer and mission manager with NASA who’s now a systems director for the Aerospace Corporation, the price per pound of getting to orbit has decreased tenfold in the past 50 years. Projecting that pace to pick up considerably, Cowart envisions trips to space becoming affordable for the general population by 2060. According to Mory Gharib, director of the aerospace program at the California Institute of Technology, competition from commercial entities seeking to cash in on the new market, technologies of scale and enhanced computational power will drive prices down. Per Garib, people who can afford to fly first class around the world would be able to afford a space flight. The estimated costs will be between $20,000 to $50,000. The Swiss investment banking firm UBS projects space tourism to generate almost $4 billion in yearly revenue by 2030.

The current estimated cost for a 4 minute space ride is around $300,000.

Benefits: Space travel is starting an industry that doesn’t exist right now, so there are economic benefits, jobs, technological advancements, motivation for kids to study and being a part of it. It is inspirational. They could spur new developments that may enhance airline travel and considerably shorten flight times. There’s going to be research conducted and scientific discoveries, so there is a lot of hidden potential as a by-product of space travel.

Carbon footprint : Next two decades are very material for climate change. We lack technologies for low-carbon flying, shipping and concrete. Large parts of the Amazon rainforest now emit more carbon dioxide than they take in, according to a study in the journal Nature. We address this now, or we enter feedback loops that may make much of Earth too hot for humans. For every space flight, the carbon it generates is equivalent to carbon produced running a car (non-electric) for a couple of centuries. Though Bezos argues that within two centuries earth would lack the necessary resources to fulfil all needs and space will be the answer, it might be worth spending effort using natural resources such as sun and wind to fulfil the needs.

Regulations: According to popular magazine Politico, many space policy experts and members of oversight committees in Congress are concerned that the government isn’t prepared for it — especially the office at the Federal Aviation Administration that is responsible for regulating the new industry, but is widely viewed as overworked and understaffed. Whether ensuring public safety, managing growing space traffic, safety of passengers or mitigating environmental hazards, there is no framework for regulating private space travel. One of the challenges facing the FAA is also the lack of knowledge of these new vehicles. Regulations can only be formed when they have enough data on these vehicles.

Call to Action: It’s turning out to be a healthy space race, one not compromising safety so that a commercially viable commercial tourism product can be delivered. Successful spaceflights by the two companies will also help set operational and safety protocols for both the commercial operators and the regulators.

But the challenge will be ironing out the numerous details, large and small. Time will tell if commercial space travel can be accomplished by not tampering with the atmosphere or through other economical and environment friendly means. For now, we can sit back and enjoy the billionaires carving out a new era in private space travel.

Opportunities for technologists as well as entrepreneurs are just opening up. If you are still doubtful and skeptical, think twice how your commute is easier today – is it not because of the GPS technologies that had origins in the Space exploration and Satellite programs from 50 years ago? What about all those location based apps that have become so used to ..think Uber, Lyft, Airbnb etc etc ..none of those would have been possible as one technological innovation stands on the shoulders of the other. That said, Space is indeed the next frontier and the sky is not even the limit !

Mentoring Corner: Do You Have The Passion For Engineering Or Are You Just Doing A Job?

July 18, 2021

Part1: Do you have the Passion for Engineering or are you just doing a job? By Dilip G. Saraf

Summary: Many professionals wait their entire life trying to uncover their passion to find out what career they should choose to engage that passion. Engineer turned Career Coach Dilip Saraf’s experience with successful clients shows that they have it backwards: Passion is the outcome of a meaningful engagement and effort, and not the cause. Once you embrace this notion, you’ll change how you look at your career and how you manage it! In this first part, he explores the distinction between having a passion versus just doing a job.

“Success causes passion more than passion causes success.”—Scott Adams

Having now worked with more than 7,000 clients in hundreds of careers and in 23+ countries I have come to the conclusion that most professionals miss out on pursuing a purposeful career because they maunder through jobs and their lives wondering what their true passion really is, and, often, not finding it, yield themselves to a life of mediocrity, false expectations, and regret as they eke out their regular paychecks, often in discomfiture.

This is particularly true for those in engineering, and especially those in high-tech jobs such as software, hardware, and systems design, later in their careers. This is mainly because the pace of technology evolution is fierce in these areas, and it is difficult to keep up with advances and compete in the job market with the younger crowd. My experience with those in engineering as they advance in their tenure, without keeping up with their professional growth in these technology specialties, surrender to becoming project or program manager, which can start their downward career spiral. Don’t get me wrong here, some intentionally pursue this path as they keep their technical edge to expand their career repertoire and become successful, applying their technical edge to become awesome project and program managers.

On the flip side of this scenario, after seeing many successes with clients who first came to me not knowing what their true calling really was, imploring me to help them uncover their inner passion for them to pursue a great career using that passion, I have come to realize that most disillusioned engineers use their continued lack of engagement in their jobs to their inability to engage with passion, and not to their ability to compete as they fall behind in their skills, which often is the underlying cause.

They rationalize their lack of engagement to their apparent lack of passion, which if they uncover, would change their life. I can almost hear them muttering to themselves, “If only someone could point out to me my true passion, I’d be leading a different life.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

The successes of many of clients that belong to the other camp, who went on to achieve C-level roles in major companies, engaging in their dream jobs, now tell a different story that is almost universal: Waiting to uncover your passion for something to pursue, hoping that it would change your life is a delusional pursuit.

On the contrary, if they view passion as the effect and not as the cause of success in one’s career, it flips on its head that whole idea of having to wait for someone to help them uncover their passion to engage with purpose. I have now come to realize that passion results from pursuing something that stems from your inner gifts (your genius—aptitude in everyday vernacular) and then harnessing one of those gifts in a systematic way to make an impact on the world, which helps you achieve a certain level of actualization. It is this actualization that drives your passion, and not the other way around.

To explain this contrarian view I have developed a model that embodies several factors and their interplay in how one achieves a unique position in their endeavors; an interplay of these forces results in developing their unique brand that can be viewed as their actualized reality. If this view of how to pursue a career, deeply engaging in your work without knowing what your real passion is from the get-go, and then whetting your passion as you get more and more engaged in your work is metaphorically akin to eating an appetizer before a meal.

This model is shown in accompanying Figure and will be explained in detail in the Part-2 of this article.

About the author:

Dilip Saraf is a highly sought after career coach who keynoted at ASEI’s 33rd Annual Convention last year and seeing the value ASEI provides, joined as a professional member of our SiliconValley chapter. An IIT and Stanford alum, he has leveraged his experience going through five different careers to establish a career coaching practice, which enjoys global clientele. www.Dilipsaraf.com

Lessons From Engineering Tales #5 Featuring Bv Jagadeesh, An Engineer Turned Venture Capitalist

June 27, 2021

In the Engineering Tales Episode #5 , we had BV Jagadeesh inspire us with his journey from a small village to a Silicon Valley startups to venture capital to his philanthropy activities. BV was awarded Engineering Entrepreneur of theyearaward byASEI in 2016 for his entrepreneurial acivities and leading “Billion Dollar Babies” initiative byTiE to encourage Indian startups to become hyper growth “unicorns”

Jagadeesh grew up in a small village with one bus that went to a major city (Bangalore).

He went to school in Bangalore and managed to live by himself while going to school and college. Ability to manage his own affairs at a young age really gave a leg up when he moved to US in later years.

After an engineering degree from Bangalore, Jagadeesh got his MS from Bombay. One of the major critical events for him happened when instead of going back home between semesters, he decided to work for a small electronic company. The practical training and guidance he got while working for a company in India opened his eyes to the possibility to future entrepreneurship. He made connections at IEEE that opened avenues later in life.

After working in multiple startups, where he learnt tremendously from other people, Jagadeesh co-founded a company called Exodus. Exodus went public and was handling 40% of ALL US internet traffic at one point. It was recognized as a US National asset by White House ( as per President Bill Clinton)

After Exodus, Jagadeesh started another startup, NetScaler, which was sold to Citrix.

As he had worked for and invested in multiple startups, Jagadeesh has a keen sense on what to look for in entrepreneurs. His theory can be summed up in three letters, CPS. Consistency, Persistence and Self-Driven. If an entrepreneur has these 3 qualities, they will succeed.

Jagadeesh currently is Managing Director at KAAJ Ventures which is an Angel Investor in multiple companies. He has been a philanthropist as well and working on solving water issues in India through an organization called OVBI

For full session please see here

*** Contributed by Amrish Chopra from Silicon Valley chapter of ASEI ***

Social Entrepreneurship And Mentoring (An Article By Reena Kapoor)

June 9, 2021

Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” If you have served as an executive mentor at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, then you’ll appreciate the truth of those words. More importantly, you’ll know what a privilege it is to be a small part of the impact that GSBI social entrepreneurs are having the world over! Did you know that Miller Center has accelerated more than 1,000 social enterprises since 2003? These collectively have improved, transformed, or saved the lives of over 400 million people in 100 countries.

I have had this privilege for nearly 4 years now, having mentored social enterprises of all kinds — for/non-profit in education, economic empowerment, last-mile health, and energy independence, in India, Mexico, Africa, the US! Each of these enterprises and their founders brought incredible smarts but also passion and uncommon commitment to their work. It is hard to find a sharper group as dedicated to a higher cause, driven by passion, and dazzlingly creative in solving problems! Mentoring these enterprises, seeing them implement plans and make a difference to lives and regions we too easily forget, has been rewarding beyond what I could have imagined.

People often ask me what it’s like to be a social enterprise mentor. I tell them that the mechanics of mentoring are not hard but it requires some thought and planning. No, we don’t just show up to offer “free advice”. Over the years as a product executive in Silicon Valley, I have advised and coached multiple software start-ups but being an executive mentor for a social enterprise requires a slightly different mindset, both because it involves mentoring the entrepreneur — not simply advising the business — AND because the whole endeavor is driven by a social mission. In addition to Miller Center’s vast resources, I like to tell the entrepreneur (and remind myself) of a few aspects that I pay attention to in my mentoring work knowing that my goal is to become a trusted advisor. I offer them here with the hope that they can be of some use to other mentors:

Bring your dispassionate business sense… with a large dollop of passion: As a mentor, ask your mentee — the social entrepreneur — critical business questions: Does the business model make sense? Do the unit economics work? Are hidden costs taken into consideration? What will scaling entail for your supply chain? Will your channels and partners be reliable at scale? These are important aspects where a social entrepreneur may encounter blind spots or may never have subjected their plans to this kind of business rigor. At the same time, remember the enterprise and its founder(s) are fueled by a passion for impact. And as a mentor, you need to help them employ a dispassionate approach to evaluating the impact side as well. What is the nature of the impact and will/can it work? (How) can the impact scale? Can it be replicated? For for-profit enterprises, how to balance profit margins (stakeholders have come to expect) with impact? Better yet, how to wrap a business model that supports the impact model so there doesn’t have to be a choice between impact versus profits? Social entrepreneurs’ passion will get them far, but to have sustained impact it’s important for them to evaluate, refine, and augment their potential for impact. As a mentor, you must help them evaluate and optimize both aspects!
Utilize Socrates’ secret sauce: One of the key skills for success as a mentor is listening. The founder/entrepreneur knows best their target market, the enterprise’s strengths, and the challenges they face. As a mentor, you have a lot to learn from them before offering guidance. Yet an equally important aspect of a mentor’s job is asking critical questions about the enterprise and understanding underlying assumptions. In fact, the Socratic method describes the ideal process — a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions. Asking why, how, based on what, often helps the entrepreneur uncover their own assumptions and weak points. They can then offer (sometimes find) evidence to support their thesis or temper their assumptions. This listening while questioning and asking for evidence while respecting passion and instinct requires a fine balance and is where the secret sauce of mentoring lies. So ask a lot of questions, ask for evidence, and supporting data, yet also listen carefully to the answers and respect the entrepreneur’s instinct and passion.
Leverage Miller Center’s frameworks, resources, expertise: At Miller Center, mentors are strongly supported in the form of training, resources, and frameworks for mentoring; and well established best practices (communication, regular updates, on-time delivery, etc.) are built into the programs. Help your mentee make ample use of the resources, especially the framework-driven, modular approaches that Miller Center offers for its various programs. These frameworks bring discipline to the process and keep the social entrepreneur working towards deadline-driven outcomes. At the end of the day, you want to make sure there is a structured, tangible output and defensible plan arising from all the analysis and discussion. This may be in the form of a solid investor pitch, a plan to scale the business (Scaleout Masterclass, Replication Program), and/or a plan to bring the business back on track after a setback such as Covid-19 (GSBI Alumni Bounceback Program). Miller Center hosts a trove of training and other resources — including generously sharing expertise across programs. For example, on a venture where I was a mentor, Miller Center connected us with an expert on supply chain issues. Similarly, I have offered advice to other ventures on B2C e-commerce challenges and mobile app development considerations.
Do check in with Reality… often: Note the social enterprise and its founders are fueled by passion. They want real impact, they want it big, and they want it now! But intentions alone, however good, are rarely enough. Measurement of output — business and impact — is a way to make sure that all the energies, resources, funding are poised to make a difference for the cause the enterprise wants to serve. Make sure you address impact metrics as well: What impact metrics make sense? How will they be calibrated and collected? What do they mean, actually measure? Remember they should be measures of outputs (counting the delivery of a product or service) and outcomes (the impact of delivering the product or service). Play devil’s advocate. Investors will want to be convinced that KPIs on impact are well thought through and that their investment will make a difference.
Pay attention to the PEOPLE: Last but most certainly NOT least is making a genuine connection with your social entrepreneur (and even their teams, as possible and appropriate)! This can make all the difference. I usually begin any mentoring relationship by asking the founder(s) about themselves, their lives before and after, what brought them to this work, and what has shaped them. Remember you are helping them develop themselves and their capabilities. Often they are moving water uphill and knowing that the mentor “gets them” and is there to help them find a better way can be invaluable. The road can be lonely and the going tough especially at times where much is outside their control e.g., COVID times. Not only does the enterprise suffer but the founder(s) watch a lot of their hard work going down the tubes. They may even be more distressed than they realize. As part of Miller Center’s new Bounceback Program, one of the things we are watchful for is founder burnout or even PTSD! Don’t underestimate these aspects.

Ultimately mentoring is about helping founders and social enterprises help themselves by developing their capabilities, sharpening their focus, and avoiding possible pitfalls. Hope some of the guidelines I present above are helpful to your efforts as a mentor. I would love to hear about your experiences and other nuggets you discovered. Happy mentoring!

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Reena Kapoor is a seasoned software product leader with hands-on experience building online and mobile applications for B2C, SaaS, and enterprise businesses for close to 20 years. She spoke at the ASEI Women’s Day Special Event earlier this year (Blog and Recording available here ) This article has been adapted from “Socrate’s Secret Sauce and other Mentoring Advice” published by her at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University.

She brings deep functional expertise in product management, innovation, Agile development practices, and go-to-market planning and execution. Reena advises and works with technology clients to find product-market fit by helping them define, build, and launch products and roadmaps with both proven and experimental business models. Reena’s early career includes brand management and new products at Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods, which she credits with teaching her principles of general management and marketing. Additionally, Reena is an active executive mentor, at Santa Clara University’s Miller Center – the largest and most successful university-based social enterprise accelerator in the world. She also serves as a director on the board of several non-profits. Reena has a B.Tech in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and a Master’s degree from Northwestern University.