At BrilliantRead, we always strive to bring to our community some of the compelling stories of successful leaders. This week we spoke to Amardeep Vishwakarma, CTO at The Indian Express. He has over 15 years of experience in internet and technology domain and is one of the most effective leaders. Let’s read more about his journey and his advice for aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
Please tell us about your background and your journey so far;
Currently, I am working as CTO at The Indian Express. I’ve spent close to 15 years in the internet industry. Prior to Indian Express, I worked with Shine.com (Subsidiary of Hindustan Times) as a CTO.
Started my career in 2005 with Info Edge (Naukri.com). I have spent major chunk of my career at online job portal Naukri.com, where I took various technology-centric roles over the course my prolific career. At the organization, I single-handedly built several open-source projects along with the company’s flagship cloud-based recruitment software (RMS).
I did my graduation & post-graduation from Graphic Era, Dehradun.
At Indian Express, one of my responsibility will be driving content personalization, enhancing user experience and increasing online readership with the help of digital technologies. The idea is to leverage data that already exists by using AI/ML and data analytics. The team will also focus on building new products around this data.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
I have enough motivation to rise early and get out of bed. I love working. I love what I do. I am very passionate about my work. Mornings are always exciting. My work is my passion and my purpose.
Making sure that our consumers get the best possible experience is something that is extremely important to me and always trying to improve on that front is what keeps me motivated.
Learning newer things is what gives me immense motivation.
Working in a team and leading one, is my motivation to do a good job. United we stand, divided we fall has been my mantra for success right along. Working in a team has taught me so much more. It enlightened me and opened up my mind to a whole new world. The confluence of ideas, thoughts, and opinions encouraged me to know and learn. There was a time when I believed that I could do everything on my own. With time I realized the magnitude of achievement possible with teamwork. As a leader, it is imperative that you trust your team members and support them. It is also important to create synergy from their individual capabilities.
Helping others and empowering people is what motivates me the most. The idea that I might provide a solution to someone’s problem is what motivates me to do a good job.
Even if it’s an off day with no work my source of motivation is my parents, my family, friends, team members. I am grateful to all of them who love and support me without judging my success or failure, my sincere thanks to all of them.
Basically, I have enough motivation to rise early and get out of bed 🙂
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Challenges are what make life interesting; Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. We don’t grow when things are easy. We grow when we have face challenges.
At every phase of life, I have faced various challenges being a student, husband, father, engineer or a leader. I have faced infinite challenges in my personal as well as professional life, but I have always found a solution to overcome those challenges.
My biggest challenge as a student was being the student! Sitting through conventional lectures was sometimes difficult.
The biggest challenges in my first year in college was the volume of work. It was a big change from high school, and standards were also much higher
Every business or enterprise has some risks. Our risks are associated with the right skill set that we look for expansion in future.
There could be a number of challenges/ problems I faced in my organizations like
– Achieving a Stretch Goal
– Bringing Out the Best in Your Employees
– Hiring the Right People
– Continuous Improvement
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
There is an interesting quote by Warren Buffett – If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.
I am an emotional person. I believe both should be in a balance in your life. Money is important, but calling it the most important won’t be correct. You cannot get too emotional while doing business nor should you run after blind money.
See, everybody needs money. If you are doing the thing right and taking care of the concerns for your team, stakeholders, customers and proving proper timely solution whenever required, the money will automatically come as a result of it
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
The pressure is very important to me. Good pressure—such as having many assignments or an upcoming deadline—helps me to stay motivated and productive. Of course, there are times when too much pressure can lead to stress. However, I’m very skilled at balancing multiple projects and meeting deadlines; this ability prevents me from feeling stressed too often.
Planning is an important tool in handling stress for me. Drawing up detailed plans for projects and even my daily work helps me to get ahead of stressful situations. When stress does inevitably arise, planning helps me to tackle the situation one step at a time to prioritize what needs to be done in an efficient way for myself and my colleagues
If there’s an unhealthy amount of stress within the team, I can feel some of that stress as well. So, what I do is to try to proactively listen to the concerns of the people around me, checking in frequently to see if they, themselves, are under stress. If they are, I think about how I can help them with their workload so the collective stress of the team doesn’t escalate. When the team’s happy, I’m happy.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
Believe that your efforts matter.
Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. The amount of effort you put in is the number of results you end up with. Without effort, life loses it’s a challenge and becomes dull.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
The great keys to success to change your life have always been the same.
1. Decide exactly what you want and where you want to go. Write down Your Goals and daily see what actions can I make today that will change everything and take me closer to this goal?
2. Create a plan – Set a deadline and make a plan to get there.
3. Take action on your plan; do something every day to move toward your goal.
And most important, Invest in Yourself
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
If you want to start out something, first you should be clear with these two points
Purpose: “Why” you want to start a business?
Value-adding: “Ask” yourself, does your entrepreneurship will add some values in someone’s life? Will it be helpful to someone to make their life easy?
Apart from this, my advice would be
– Develop a comprehensive plan
– Take advice whenever required
– Research your market
– Do minimum viable product (MVP) first
– Keep backup plans ready with you
– Never give up.
– Follow your passion and follow it sincerely
– Always keep learning
At last, one thing which I say to everyone – Respect people’s time, if you want your time to be respected.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the corporate world and startup ecosystem. Stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
