30 Minutes with Anshoo Gaur

What would you say about a man who happens to be in the industry just for 14 years and is the India head of a company widely known as the market leader in its domain(OSS & BSS),add the fact that the india centre of the company is the largest world over.
I had a chance to meet this person one-on-one in his office and with the silly,sometimes childish questions which I shooted on him ,he showed a remarkable patience.

Back in december,2008 when i first attended a townhall by Anshoo Gaur, Head Amdocs India, i could hardly resist myself from getting impressed by the flair and charm of this person. I must add that two most impressive personalities I know at amdocs are Anshoo gaur and suresh menon,another director at amdocs, . FYI, suresh is part of my network at linkedin and I have already met Anshoo(haha,just to impress you :) ).

The meeting was scheduled at 1300 hrs and his secretary reminded me two times in the day in case I had forgot.How could I? I was looking forward to the meeting and a few of my colleagues too ,whom I had told abt it. Reached his office 5 minutes earlier,was told to wait in the lounge and I had already started feeling the aura around a CEO. On the table were two nasscom magazines costing a few dollars(I have this habit of looking at the price of anything I come across) and I could barely look into it when the secretary told me to go inside .

Went inside,shaked hands and it began,Anshoo looked out for my performace report in his database,cudn't find it so he had to rely on whatever I told him about me.After a few formal questions which are meant to be confidential for a company and hence I wont go into their details, I started with my barrage of questions.

To start with, I asked him that Amdocs should keep visiting ISM,Dhanbad for the school was a good one and was looking to forge a long term relationship with Amdocs. Anshoo then dwelt upon the quality of campuses they visit and how low they had recruited from campuses this year. However, he noted my point and promised he'd talk to the Recruiting Head,HR.

Moving on, I asked him about his stellar success he had in the industry in just 14 years and from here onwards I took control of the discussion though,he was the one talking for most of the time(hehe).

The first word that came out of him was hard work,he said that he was not ashamed in being called a workaholic. According to him, if you work hard, most certainly you'll get lucky. For him luck means being in the right place at the right time and hard work was the key to it. Then he stressed on the importance of doing a valuable work and not just any work . Though most of the things he said sound cliched,but when the words come from a person who has applied those cliched principles in life, they assume significance and penetrate deeper.

The discussion also gave me an insight into how amdocs wok. For eg. when he said that in his earlier days at sabre during requirement gathering sessions,he used to promise his client more than 15% productivity without even looking at the difficulty of project, I could easily relate it to my life at amdocs. Most of my colleagues at the company would agree to the fact that probably that's how the sales team of amdocs works. Being a nascent developer,I have often bore the brunt of fulfilling a particularly hard requirement that was promised by the site team .

Going forward,he talked about the future plans of amdocs india and how they plan to cut on costs by recruting more and more freshers. Although, freshers require an investment in terms of training ,but once ready they are productive as well as cost effective. When we were done and the clock was showing that we were approaching the end time,anshoo said "I want you to leave with the note that coming year is going to be very exciting for India development centre and there will be ample oppurtunities for the personal growth of employees as well as the for the growth of amdocs india".I could sense genuine optimism in his words as only a few days back, amdocs had managed to win a major client.

I have often wondered,how he managed to climb the top echelons of amdocs management in just 2 years of his stay in the company? After the meeting I was clear,how he has managed to do this. The answer was still the same old cliched word 'HARD WORK'.