Rajagopal Balakrishnan, regional director (South India and Sri Lanka), SAP India Pvt Ltd, strongly believes in giving back to the community, and feels that one needs to always think of the common good even on the fast track to success.

I believe I had a great upbringing largely because of my father being in a transferable government job. Owing to that, I studied in Kendriya Vidyalayas, central schools where children from all backgrounds mingled, giving me great cross-cultural exposure. My early schooling was done in Kolkata and Kanpur. We spent a lot of time in the North-East too, and it was a wonderful learning experience. The exposure that I acquired at that time has stood by me till today—I have no adjustment problems, and I respect all cultures. My mother was a professor in a medical college, and my brother is a software engineer, now in the US.

After finishing school, I did my mechanical engineering from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). This was another place that taught me great adaptability. I have never been in a situation that I couldn’t handle. AMU is a great place to study, but there were some people with reservations about a boy from Kerala being in their midst. They took time to open up, but once that was over,

I settled in quite well. There were a number of strikes but I finally managed to get my degree.
The IIM experience

After completing my BE in 1990, I (like all engineering graduates) wanted to go to B-school. I badly wanted IIM Kolkata to be my alma mater, but fate willed otherwise. I had a job with VXL in Kolkata after my engineering, while I tried very hard for my B-school entrance, and in 1991, got admission into IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A). Thereafter began the next interesting phase of my life.
The IIM campus is another world altogether. It has a very interesting composition of people, of activities and academics, the ‘just right’ methods of instruction, and of course, a balance between theories and the real world. The discussions and case studies of business processes give students a very good foundation. I must confess, however, that finance was never my strong point. I am still not very good at it.

Getting into work mode
After IIM, I took up working with a US-based engineering products company, ITW, and was posted at Lucknow. The company was good, and came out with an ESOP way back in 1991. It appreciated my background and gave a bit of extra responsibility to me, because of my B-school qualification. It was a very interesting time to join the engineering machinery and consumables industry. Looking back, it appears the world was poised for a take-off. MNCs were just entering India, and Lucknow, the heartland of UP, may not have been a great place to sell engineering products. This challenge made the job even more interesting. The rest of my team was in its thirties, while I was 24, which made it very challenging indeed.

We had a quarterly challenge to focus on a product, and the difficult task was to first make consumers aware of the product. Those years gave me a great insight into some fundamental principles of business, the best of them being that business cannot be done sitting in boardrooms—one has to be out in the market.

A taste of technology
My knowledge of finance and IT was, however, very limited. In 1995, I felt I needed to educate myself in these fields, so I took up a job at Microland as national sales manager and moved to Bangalore. The company was willing to experiment with me and I was willing to take a chance. There was a personal reason too—my parents were in Thiruvananthapuram, and I was hoping they would join me.

It was a very exciting year. My peers tried to teach me about IT, but I took some time to learn. We had to deal with well-known names like Cisco as technology partners. I learnt a lot, selling in an extremely competitive industry with competing technologies and applications constantly being updated. Back then, I was selling the high-end Cisco routers. It was extremely challenging, but somewhere deep down I was looking for something more. Between 1996 and 1998, I handled structured cabling, and was involved in support, strategy, communications, field projects, and several other aspects of the business. I did a lot of things that I had never done before.

And betting on SAP
When the company decided to implement SAP, I also moved to SAP implementation. Around the same time, an ex-colleague of mine started a company of his own, named Kshema, and I joined him. I had a great ten-month period, learning the ropes. As I got more and more involved in this start-up, I found that I was enjoying this work immensely. I handled the business on the East Coast of the US, till Mphasis decided to take over Kshema, and I decided to move out since I felt that the organisation wasn’t in line with where I wanted to go. Since I had already learnt to sell services, I decided to join SAP. The company had been in India for only three years, and there was already a growing bank of visionary customers whose businesses had taken off on SAP solutions.
I took to this new role like a fish to water. I just love selling business applications, and the sense that this was something that would add to a business, increase or even generate revenues, add to the supply chain and excite finance, gave me a high. Since 1999, I have performed various roles in SAP, taken on different responsibilities, and focused even on manufacturing sales (which got me some big deals).

In 2001, I took up the SME services part of the business. We had an Indian strategy, but even at that time, we had discovered that there were millions of medium-sized companies out there that could do tremendously better with SAP solutions. I felt we needed to focus on them. My responsibility was for that part of the business called emerging segments, and I then increased my portfolio to include Sri Lanka as a territory.

Satisfied…for now!
I am very satisfied with my role. I think that as the leader of my team, I have the additional onus of motivating them. I can do that best by being an example—in practical problem-solving and by being clear about my strengths and weaknesses. From the professional perspective, we all have our goals and visions, but we need to set real goals. I have always believed that to hire and retain a winning team is like meeting half your goals.
My family is the focus of my life. My wife, Geetha, is an IIT M.Tech—I always acknowledge that she is more educated than I am, and is working with Accenture. I have an eighteen-month-old daughter, Shreya. I love playing with her whenever I get the time. I also play tennis and cricket and am now trying to teach myself golf. The principle that I live by, even swear by, is that if you are passionate about your ambitions, success ensues as a byproduct. One needs to have a desire to succeed but at the same time, be conscious that each of our actions should serve the common good at some level. SAP, in this regard, presents a tremendous opportunity for creating value for the entire ecosystem. As I grow, I learn, and that helps me grow more.