Avinash Singh has a theory. He feels that since he grew up doing "kar sewa," that is, offering service to the community, 'work' is what defines him. His parents were followers of the Dayalbagh Radhasoami faith of Agra and he studied engineering at the Dayalbagh University (in Agra) which insisted that all its students perform "kar sewa."
That involved working in the fields, sowing, harvesting or removing weeds, apart from cooking and feeding others.
So it's not surprising that Singh, chief operating officer at Birlasoft in New Jersey in the US often boasts about the company's current performance and future plans.
Singh was in New Delhi a few weeks ago for the inauguration of the company's third development centre at Noida on the capital's outskirts and to discuss the company's future growth strategies.
And though the new 1,400-seat centre is currently only 50 per cent occupied, Singh says that the company will soon need to set up another facility to match its growth. "In the next 18 months our India head count will go up from 2,000 employees to 3,500 people," he says.
Birlasoft, the global technology services division of the C K Birla group, boasts of development centres in the US, Australia, Singapore and India.
The company (in which GE Capital has a strategic equity stake) offers software services to several major international clients in the banking, financial and insurance industries. Needless to say, GE is its largest client.
Singh says that the company is doing well in applications development and support services in e-commerce, data warehousing, legacy systems, CRM and ERP.
"And now the focus area is web and PeopleSoft services and quality assurance and IT governance services for which heavy investments in infrastructure have been made," he adds.
Singh was part of Birlasoft's launch team when it was known as Birla Information Technology and moved to New Jersey in 1996 to look after sales in the US. Today he manages global operations across the US, Europe, the Asia Pacific region, and the Middle East.
Being a Radhasoami follower., he's a teetotaller and a vegetarian. And despite his busy work schedule, Singh still attends "satsangs" in New Jersey and also practices "dhyaan" (meditation).
Singh is also a chartered financial analyst (CFA) who later attended an advance management programme at Harvard Business School. Naturally, he reads a lot of management books, some of them several times over. He has just read Jim Collins's "Good to Great" again.
"Right now I am in the middle of Stephen Covey's "The 8th Habit "� From Effectiveness to Greatness," he says. He has no qualms about admitting that he's read enough Mills & Boons as well and still enjoys legal thrillers.
