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Shalabh Aggarwal

Shalabh Aggarwal

Chief Technology Officer at Openlabs Technologies and Consulting (P) Ltd.
Openlabs Technologies and Consulting (P) Ltd.
My family background
I belong from Ghaziabad which is a small town located adjacent to Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh. My father was a civil contractor working primarily with the construction department of Northern Railways. He passed away in a road accident when i was in pre-final year of my Enginnering. My mother is a teacher in a school nearby teaching subjects like Hindi and Sanskrit. I have a younger sister pursuing CS (Company Secretary).
Initiative to develop a country
According to me, the best any professional can do to help India become a developed country is to do their job as they are expected which will help eliminate any of the corruption / politics / undue hierarchy that comes up in private or government sector. Plus a bit of social service / community work which does not hurt them much, will surely help. Now this social service or community work does not essentially mean that donate money or help out poor. A bit of community work in their own domain will help. But any of this has to start from basics. Examples: 1.A professional in manufacturing industry can help the workers understand computers or help them read and write to start with. 2. A computer professional can make sure that he helps future generation of computer graduates coming up is industry ready by helping them via meet ups or seminars or any other mediums available. Anything that starts from basic level goes a long way.
Important decision
One of the most important decision i had made was to leave Infosys and join a startup when I had just started my carrier against the advice of all family and friends. Another decision was not to continue with my father's growing business after he passed away as I dint have enough interest in it and think about something non conventional. Another was to chose to work on technologies that no one had heard of and the market was highly volatile and limited for such technologies. All the above decisions paid off and I am successful at what I do now.
Important lesson learned
Always do what you feel is right. Most of the decisions taken by our generation are non conventional and are usually opposed but the gut feeling tells what is right and what is not.
My strongest skill
1. Calm Nature 2. Cool headedness for dealing with tense situations 3. Ability to think from employer as well as employee perspective 4. Determination to achieve what others might feel very difficult to achieve,
Qualities needed to become a successful leader
1. Leadership 2. Humbleness 3. Ability to read through people 4. Ability to deal with different people differently 5. Optimism 6. Excellent inter-personal skills
Brief description about me
I am a computer science engineering graduate by education. I work as the Chief Technology Officer at Openlabs Technologies & Consulting (P) Ltd which has been identified by NASSCOM as one of fastest growing companies in India.
Degree that I recommend
In my opinion, degrees does not make a person what he is. Its the right attitude to deal with situations and experience that matters most. But still, as per popular belief, a master's degree in business administration might help me ahead in my career.
Ensuring success
I learn something new every other day. I try to learn from mine as well as other's mistakes. I try to socialise with more people in my domain via seminars and conferences and get a vision of how other's deal with specific problems to widen my thoughts and grow.
Influenced by
Its my father has influenced me most in my life. I have seen him rise from a person who struggled to earn bread for next day to the owner of a pretty stable business that too fighting the red tapes put up government at each step and corruption in government being the biggest hindrance at each step. He always kept his cool whole dealing with all situations but still had a headstrong vision how to reach his goal.
More about myself
I had a pretty stable job at infosys. But I was never satisfied with the work there as it lacked innovation and individual recognition was not to be seen anywhere. At that time I decided to join Openlabs which was a startup as the CTO which asked for a lot of determination and we had to burn a lot of midnight oil to get the company to the current stable level.
Thoughts on Education system of our country
Indian education system is pretty rigorous and gives an insight of the world view at least at the school level. The major flaw I find is the way selection of student is done at the college level. This forces the students to take their focus completely off the happenings in the fields of their interest and leap into the maze of conventional subjects. This effectively hinders the growth of students. A system of education, where the performance shall be not be assessed just on the basis of one examination but where the students have multiple fields and chances to prove themselves, should be developed.
Couple of years from now
In short, I see myself on the board of directors of a 100 crore company and guiding the company to growth at an even faster pace. It will very immature to say that I have a defined path to achieve this goal as the technology and trends in market change very rapidly and I have to be flexible enough to change my course according to these factors.
My role model
I would call Steve Jobs as my role model. His determination to achieve the best drives me to success everyday. His philosophy of living each day as if it was his last is the base of my daily endeavours. I would like to quote an example from his life. "When first Mac was being designed at Apple, Steve asked for the motherboard layout to look 'beautiful'. Everyone asked him what does that mean, no one is going to open and see the motherboard." But Steve was adamant on his demand and now we have the best looking desktops and laptops as Macs both from inside and outside.
My achievements
1. The technologies we have developed at Openlabs in such a short span of time. We have a complete web framework of our own which is powered by an ERP and this kind of web framework is one of its kind in the industry. And this web framework which would take months to develop at a conventional company with scores of employees, took just 4-6 months with just two people working on it. 2. The company has grown at a rate of 300% after I joined as CTO.
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