The Exchanges

Q Sure. And, uh, and you come from a very different background. You come from a village, right? Yeah. Your story is from, in the fourth class, you moved from village to a city. And then you struggled, right? Coping up with first language, then the class. So, so tell us about the background that you come from, right? The house, if you can remember what it looked like, the village.

A So, uh, my parents, uh, moved from Andhra to, uh, a small village, uh, in Raichu district near, uh, Thungabhadra river. And, uh, uh, just, In searching for, you know, greener pastures, right, because there was a dam built near Hampi, and a lot of families migrated downstream from the dam, so that, you know, they can cultivate, you know, better, and there will be water source will be, you know, continuous, right. So, so while I think it gave them a decent opportunity economically, Uh, it was very hard, uh, you know, because these were, like, uh, makeshift villages which got made in 19 seventies and eighties. Uh, and these are, like, not revenue villages. That means, you know, they are, like, not, uh, there is no government school or there is no, uh, facility. Uh, there are not even, like, roads, right? Uh, and, uh, but, uh, But the parents always had this, ah, thing of, ah, we need to get our kids educated, right, so we can't actually, again, put them into farming, because, ah, I come from a farming background, ah, my dad still does farming, ah, in the village, ah, even though he has reduced, ah, you know, how much he used to do, ah, versus what we are doing now, ah, and somewhere, ah, even I have that DNA, you know, every time I go back to village, you know, I, I, you know, I get so much peace, Ah, you know, just looking at the things. Ah, but, ah, you know, I think due to luck…

AI assessment note: “my parents, uh, moved from Andhra to, uh, a small village”

Q Yeah, and, and you, uh, were a consultant, right? You don't have a responsibility of full-time employee.

A Yeah, yeah. No, I was a consultant, but Trilogy was like a grueling work, right? Uh, there were, like, many weeks, uh, where I used to spend, like, sometimes, uh, 15 hours, 18 hours, you know, uh, working. And, um, it was a great learning, uh, on two ways. Uh, learned a lot of tech, a lot of compressed learning, and a lot of learning about acquiring companies, turning them profitable very quickly by, uh, you know, hiring a very small team in India, and cutting all the high costs. Uh, you know, how do you, like, turn a business into a profitable business, right? Is something that I learned. Uh, also, what small teams can do is, uh, you know, another lesson I learned from Trilogy. And the third lesson was, Ah, even if you are like not the highest, ah, Visible brand, like Google or Microsoft, ah, you can actually attract, like, really, really, ah, top people to come and work for you when you work on very complex problems, right? So the reason, like, a lot of people, computer science people from IITs used to come and join Trilogy. So Trilogy was, like, a dream company, you know, in early 2000, ah, I think especially in India, ah, it was, like, one of those dream companies that, Most IITNs and NITNs and, you know, these people wanted to come and work. And they used to hire like one, two people from a campus. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “No, I was a consultant, but Trilogy was like a grueling work”

Q And they were well off, or they were not?

A They were not well off. They were, like, uh, you know, probably slightly better than a farming family, but, uh, they are, like, lower middle class, right? Uh, both of them used to work in a factory. And, uh, so they had two kids. We were three. Uh, my sister, me, and my brother. Uh, I think some of this, uh, you know, uh, what you can do for people also comes from what I have seen both my mother and my aunt do, uh, for us. Uh, because it's incredibly hard, you know, if you're working, plus you have five kids in the house. You have to cook for them. All of us, like, very young. And, uh, you know, probably, like, the age gap between us is, like, three years, two years, you know, etc. Ah, so my mother raised, ah, my cousins, ah, because they were like very young for the first four, five years here in the village. So my aunt was actually, you know, raising my sister, me, and my brother, you know, in the town near, you know, Hyderabad. Ah, and, ah.

AI assessment note: “They were not well off. They were, like, uh, you know, probably slightly better”

Q And repetition matters a lot in the village, right? Yeah, yeah.

A And, ah, so that way, you know, he's like very conservative, right? Ah, I mean, he's so conservative, ah, that he wouldn't even like take a small loan from anyone. He doesn't want like any liability, right? Ah, so there were like many times, you know, where I had to pay like 8000 rupees for semester. My dad will sell the paddy, but, ah, these millers, rice millers will not give money immediately. They'll put a 30 day, 60 day period. And I had to wait, like, a week or two weeks longer to go back to college, because that 8000 rupees was, like, not there. Ah, and he would not even, like, just go borrow. Like, you know, anybody, a lot of people would give, right? And, ah, of course, there were, like, people who always used to say, you know, don't tell your dad, you know, I'll give you, just go to college. You know, like, we'll take from your dad or mom later. Uh, you know, people like that were there as well. Uh, but he was like, very conservative. And when I joined Trilogy, when I told him how much I was making, he said, I hope you are not doing anything wrong. Right? Because he's like, how can somebody give you so much? Right? And, uh, he never heard of them. Right? The only folks he heard was like Tata, Infosys, Wipro. Uh, first of all, he said, what is this company? Uh, you know, I hope they are not doing anything wrong.

AI assessment note: “he's like very conservative, right? Ah, I mean, he's so conservative”

Q It would have reminded you of that Gurukul, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, not only that, actually, one funny thing, what happened was I joined this project. And, uh, they asked me to, like, Write web services uh, in Java. And uh, by then there was an open source tool called WSDL to Java. You know, if you run it, it will automatically generate the client stub and server stub code uh, for your web service. I just ran it. So I had like this whole thing ready, you know, in less than a week. And uh,, but uh, they, they wanted me to do that whole thing, you know, in a year. Now, And there was not much to do. So, I was just fixing, you know, other people work and, you know, what not. And helping other people. And I really thought, okay, you know, this is probably not what I want to do. So, there I met a guy, ah, called Meenakshi Sundaram. We used to call him Michu. Ah, he basically said, hey, you are very smart. Ah, you probably should go to Bangalore. My cousin works in this company called Trilogy. Ah, try working with them. So, then I left Kolkata and came to Bangalore.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, not only that, actually, one funny thing”