Rajesh Dhuddu MBA Finance, 1995 – 1997, Prasanthi Nilayam. Currently, he is the VP and Practice Lead for Blockchain and CyberSecurity at Tech Mahindra. He is part of the Lattice80 Top 100 and the Thinkers360 Top 5. He is in the IIM-A Blockchain Advisory. He is a Tedx Speaker and a Mentor.
The journey thus far…
After graduating from Parthi, brother Rajesh took up a job as a part-time personality trainer in Vijayawada. Later he got a job as a Project Executive with the Apollo Hospitals Group. He had an opportunity to work on project feasibility and implementation pertaining to a large Independent Power Project in India. This was a completely new subject for him considering that he did not have a background in either engineering or power projects. He had an opportunity to put together a complete techno-commercial proposal covering 330 MW Coal-fired Thermal Power Plant in Narela, Delhi.
After over a year of working at this company, he moved to join the Tata Group. Brother Rajesh had an opportunity to work on GSM and CDMA businesses at Tata Group taking care of Business Planning, Product Development, Value Added Services, and Strategy. He then moved to a Tata Sons owned subsidiary within the group to set up one of the largest back-office operations for the Group’s companies. During this time he had an opportunity to work closely with stalwarts of the Tata Group such as R Krishna Kumar, Kishore Chaukar, R Gopal Krishnan, Ishaat Hussain and Ratan Tata himself. This was the time when he was also given an opportunity to move to the US to lead the completion of the acquisition of a US-based company and integrate it with the entity in India. After over eight-and- a-half years with the Tata Group, he moved to join Quatrro, a company promoted by one of the celebrated serial entrepreneurs – Raman Roy. At Quatrro, brother Rajesh had the opportunity to incubate over three companies in the ITeS, Risk Management and Payments Processing domains and also led M&A and Strategy for six companies under the Quatrro stable out of which four had successful exits.
Following the 12-year stint at Quatrro, he joined Tech Mahindra to establish the Blockchain practice. Today, it has been recognized as one of the best in the world by several industry analysts. He now leads both Cybersecurity and Blockchain practices at Tech Mahindra with a combined team size of over 600 members.
During this professional journey was also fortunate, with Swami’s blessings, to be associated with several industry bodies like Nasscom, CII and educational institutes such as IIM Ahmedabad and School of Inspired Leadership. He was also recognized by Lattice80 as one of the Top 100 Blockchain Influencers in the world, Thinkers 360 as Top 5 Blockchain Leaders in the world. He also serves on Steering Committee at IIM Ahmedabad for Blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer Energy Generation and Trading Framework. He has been a part of the World Economic Forum’s circle of 5000 experts on Emerging Technologies.
The path has also been fraught with challenges
Apart from the usual challenges that most of us face with respect to cross-team collaboration, interpersonal dynamics, he also had a unique challenge. He always had an opportunity to work in fields that required deep subject matter expertise to be successful be it the Power sector, Telecom, ITeS, Payments, Blockchain or Cybersecurity. With virtually no formal education/qualifications in these areas, the chances of abject failure were very high. Thanks to Swami’s constant guidance, he was able to master these subjects on his own through a combination of self-learning, learning from others such as entrepreneurs and subject matter experts by reaching out to them. Many times, he was introduced to these people seemingly ‘coincidentally’ without any major effort. He considers it as the handiwork of the Divine Hand. Swami’s teachings (Hands that help are holier than lips that pray, Help ever – Hurt Never, Duty is God, Work is worship, Duty without love is deplorable…) have been his guiding posts in the corporate world. They helped shape a service- oriented corporate world and have also helped build lasting relationships with team members.
Brother Rajesh has received numerous awards such as the ‘Most Valuable Employee’ awards and has received ‘Extraordinary Recognitions’ in almost all companies. His participation has always added unique values so much so that one corporate senior remarked, “Wish I could make more copies of you and deploy”. He has also been told that companies will be very happy to “hire more from your institute so that we get more people with the same work ethic, dedication and passion”.
Lessons learnt from Bhagawan
Brother Rajesh has been associated with a few startup accelerators to mentor and guide entrepreneurs. He has also mentored corporate executives through platforms such as Everwise. He has organized for five years a program called Tour de Vision – Miles for Lives that aims at building awareness for blind people and the challenges they face. Under this initiative participating cyclists ride 25 or 50 km and their friends and family members raise funds on their behalf.
Memories of the hostel days
Living in the hostel was a great learning experience and a lot of fun. Living in a small room with 10 to 12 people requires a lot of adjustments and sacrifices. This makes you expand yourself and accept more people. Watching TV on select Sundays, running the kitchen for sick students, contributing to various Seva activities, serving food during lunch and dinner time, decorating the hostel and celebrating festivals are eternally sweet memories. He has also served as a person who was allowed to go into Puttaparthi town on cycle a few days in a week to fetch various items for hostel inmates on account of his ability to speak the local language. He relished these outings under the aegis of service.
Other unforgettable memories include the unique hostel ‘Kotlus’ (any inadvertent error made in communication was classified as a Kotlu). Once a rat entered the hostel room and everyone began chasing it. One of the roommates, in his excitement, shouted, “Hey brothers! Don’t trouble it. It’s a human being like us.” Kotlu could definitely stand for something that is ‘cut loose’!
Advice for younger brothers
Brother Rajesh’s advice could be arranged in five Ps.
- Purpose
- Passion
- Personality
- Patience
- Perseverance
“Identify your purpose and passion in your professional journey. Once you identify it, make your personality to reflect both. This becomes your trademark. To establish your own identity, lots of patience and perseverance are required. Identity cannot be demanded. It needs to be earned through hard work. Hard work cannot be demonstrated in shorter stints in an organization. Swami himself has said once that you need to invest at least ten years in an organization to be recognized fully. Also, a lot of people mistake articulation for action. This is called MAFA. The best words and deeds are actions. Hence, you may consider Swami’s teaching as ‘Hands that contribute are holier than lips that just articulate’.”
