|
Home> Executive Track> Portraits
|
| Chipping up India |
| Poornima Shenoy is building a brand for the semiconductor industry in India |
| Priya Padmanabhan |
| Friday, July 28, 2006 |
 |
 |
| Hobbies |
Reading, travel |
| Best moment |
Achieving personal and professional goals |
| A Must Have |
Good reading material |
| Passionate about |
My personal and professional commitments |
| Fav gizmo |
My cell phone - cannot do without it |
| Fav destination |
Goa - where I grew up |
| What ticks you off |
Insincerity |
| A lesson for life |
Give a man a fish; you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime |
| Motto: |
Do unto others what you would expect them to do unto you |
|
|
 |
For an industry body that has been in existence for a year, the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) has achieved quite a lot. Its lobbying efforts are for all to see: The Government is formulating a semiconductor policy; a fab city is coming up in Hyderabad and the industry is articulating its requirements in terms of talent pool requirements, infrastructure and government support.
All these important moves have come about as a result of the efforts of Poornima Shenoy, president ISA and other active members of the association. Shenoy is an ideal foil in the association that counts leading high-tech companies, which are testing the limits of Moore's law.
Shenoy has brought in her business and marketing acumen to make the industry more visible in India and the world. This is quite a challenge in India, where all types of high-technology activities are bracketed under the catch-all “IT” umbrella.
Shenoy is visibly excited by the prospects that the $3 billion industry has in store. “We envision a golden triangle in the Indian semiconductor industry consisting of three hubs: Bangalore for chip design; Hyderabad for chip manufacture and Chennai for electronic manufacturing. India will be the only country which will have the entire ecosystem covered.”
She credits the achievements of the industry to ISA, which she says, was built up by good people who dream about India being the next global destination.
Shenoy has had a long and successful career and has tried her hand at advertising, marketing, entrepreneurship and in strategy roles. It is ironic that Shenoy who gave up an electronic engineering seat after her 12th to pursue a degree in Arts has now come to head a semiconductor industry body.
Her growing years were spent in Goa and she came to Bangalore in early 1980s to do her Bachelor's degree in Arts in History, Economics and Political Science at Mount Carmel College. She followed up her degree with an MBA in marketing from TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) in Manipal.
Following her management degree, she spent her initial working years with advertising agency Sistas and market research firm IMRB in Bangalore. She counts these years as invaluable since she learnt the importance of field research and also people management skills.
|
|
Starting-up
In 1990, the start-up bug struck her. Shenoy who was then 25, teamed up with 27-year-old Anuradha Parthasarathy, a Wipro engineer, to start Nexus Consulting, an executive search firm. The enterprising duo took a different approach to headhunting, which helped them differentiate in the market.
“We felt recruitment was more about concept-level selling than about HR which I still maintain till today. You are essentially selling the capabilities of an individual to a company. So it is not just about compensation, OD and benefits. Those follow later,” explains Shenoy.
Nexus's approach found a lot of takers. The company's first customer was Wipro and second, Infosys. In the first few years, the company focused on various segments like advertising, IT and FMCG but by 1994, Nexus decided to focus on IT when the business in the segment boomed. Nexus then went on to become the country's number one executive search company for IT in the 1990s.
They saw some initial teething troubles but sailed through the economic slump of 1991, lack of funding and the Iraq war. Shenoy feels that Nexus was way ahead of its time. “We started in 1990 way before headhunting became fashionable.”
Looking back at those start-up days, she recalls some amusing encounters. A manager of a leading bank in Bangalore refused them a loan to start the business since he did not understand how two young women could create a business out of services. Similarly, a prominent association for women entrepreneurs did not understand their business idea and suggested that they would rather have them make paper-flowers and jam!
In the absence of funding, Shenoy and Parthasarathy did not take salaries and ploughed back all their earnings into the company. Shenoy credits her spouse for being supportive.
“Having faith from families is a reassuring factor.”
The professional and no-nonsense mindset of the IT industry is what made Shenoy focus on hiring for the IT industry. “Decision making is so fast and non-hierarchical. One of the reasons why the industry grew is because it picked on the right talent,” she says. Nexus' focus and familiarity with the IT industry also provided an intuitive reluctance to deal with
dotcoms.
Post-Nexus
By then, Nexus had achieved success and was sold to e4e in 2000. Shenoy stayed with e4e for a year and after a short sabbatical, worked with Nasscom in
Bangalore. In 2003, she won a Chevening award for “Women in Leadership and Management” and spent three months in the UK.
She counts her stay in UK as one of the most defining moments of her career. “This really shaped me. I met eleven other women with a similar drive who were committed to their careers.”
As part of the program, she wrote a paper on women in IT industry in India. She is gratified that her paper has been recently chosen to be included in a book published by the University of Southern Australia.
Following the course, she joined the Manipal Group as the head of strategy. But Shenoy missed the fast pace of the IT industry. She informally started helping ISA in their efforts and the impressed industry members zeroed-in on her as the best bet to head ISA.
Shenoy stresses that money is not the motivation to work in an industry body but a passion to contribute to your country.
She views her job at ISA as a way of paying back to the country for the experience she has gained in the professional life so far.
© CyberMedia News
|
Page(s) 1
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
