Offshoring Secrets: Building and Running a Successful India Operation

In this book, years of experiences and interactions with various people in this industry are drawn upon to suggest ways to setup and run an India operation. You will get solutions to numerous day-to-day problems that managers in the parent offices face. You will also understand the issues faced by managers in India, and their frustrations in dealing with their counterparts in the parent company. This book can be used to:

• Resolve cultural clashes
• Overcome communication issues
• Understand the risk analysis
• Successfully hiring and retaining
• People management
• Various HR and Government policies to adhere to
• Project execution

Utkarsh Rai, head of India Operations, Infinera, started his career in the late eighties as one of the first few batches of IT professionals who joined Siemens in India and went on to work in Siemens Germany for a stint. The team returned to form a spin-off called Siemens Information Systems in India, an IT company.

Utkarsh moved on to work with Adaptec in Silicon Valley, where he was involved in a full-blown product development lifecycle. In the boom period of the late nineties, when Indians flooded the U.S. in search of IT jobs, he could see India--and Bangalore, specifically--being a center for product development. He flew against the winds of the time and joined the Global Software Group at Motorola in Bangalore.

This opportunity provided him with the experience in leading large teams, recruiting a large pool of engineers and handling complex people issues. When the first Motorola facility in Bangalore were filling up, the team was asked to move to a new location in Bangalore, which provided him an additional opportunity to learn about the challenges of starting fresh. As he grew to become a member of the senior management team of Motorola in Bangalore, he addressed operational issues like crisis management, setting up the right compensation and benefits, adherence to government regulations and execution challenges.

This experience prepared him for his current role as the head of India operations for Infinera--a startup in digital optical networking--a position that he took in early 2003. At that time, there were few people on board, and he was responsible for reinforcing the company culture and its policies, ramping up the team in number and in skills, and over the past four years, he has achieved a smooth execution with ownership and drive from India. He understands the Indian Government's regulations and operational compliance, and setup a new facility in line with the expansion plan. The single largest success has been in managing and developing the greatest asset-people.

Infinera went IPO in June 2007.

All these experiences triggered Utkarsh to write a book on India operations, which he sees as a great way to share his knowledge and experience with wider audience.