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Anand Arvind
PGPMAX Founding Class
VP, Products, Soham Online



Previous Occupation: VP, Engineering, SumTotal Systems.
Present Occupation: VP, Products, Soham Online
Sector: High Tech
Work Experience: 17 years in building software products 
Interests - Professional/Personal: Building enterprise class software applications, mobile applications, Personal: Squash, Lego

Tell us about yourself – your profile, recap your professional life after your under-graduate education including your career progression.
I am currently Vice President of Products at Soham Online where I am responsible for the product strategy and product development of SaaS applications for the SMB services industry. This is a startup based in Hyderabad. Our first product targets the Spa, Salon, and Medical clinics and is called ManageMySpa(www.managemyspa.com)

I have 17 years of experience in building software products for enterprise customers, and in managing large global teams for building enterprise class applications in the cloud. Prior to ManageMySpa, I was VP, Engineering at SumTotal where I  was leading a global development team, building talent management applications used by many Fortune 500 companies Before this I worked at Microsoft in building components of the Windows Operating System, and have a background in developing software to simulate complex  engineering processes. I have a Masters in engineering from the Ohio  State University and  a bachelors  in engineering from BITS, Pilani, apart from the executive MBA from ISB.

Describe your fondest memory at ISB.
Graduation day-when we were finally done with the programme -- a programme, which introduced me to 60 very different individuals in very different industries who will be friends for life.

With the knowledge and experience gained at ISB, tell us something that you will do differently in your professional life?
I will make sure I only work on what I enjoy doing, and will figure out how to balance time at work and home which still seems to be a challenge.

What are some new trends in your current work industry that can be shared as valuable knowledge-transfer?
We build cloud based solutions which are enterprise grade for small business in India and are seeing them adopt to this very quickly, and move away from traditional desktop based software, or no software. With advances in technology, SaaS software services, cloud based infrastructure, it is becoming much more effective to launch startups and experiment with ideas without investing a lot of capital.

If you have to sum up ISB in one word:
Humility - you realise there are so many people who know so much about so many different things, and I know so little in each of these subjects.

What are the areas that you can contribute in to ISB?
I have been helping whenever asked to help with various events at ISB and I will continue to do so.