Real life adventure

ICE PEOPLE

Flecka Picardo

If there is someone who has faith in Reality TV's India foray, it is Flecka Picardo. For not only has the bubbly 26-year-old joined the channel as its marketing manager for Asia Pacific and India, she is confident about its future in the region. "Reality TV is the first fully dedicated channel beaming hard-hitting, action-packed and emotion-filled programming into India. Its real life drama has unpredictable, unbelievable and unrehearsed footage. And this is the kind of programming that is popular with Indian audiences," Picardo says. Reality TV focuses on real life adventure.

In her new job, she will focus on expanding the channel's current reach of 15 million homes in India. "Though Reality TV is an English language channel, there will be efforts at localising content. Programmes could be dubbed or even produced in Hindi later," she says.

At Reality TV, Picardo will be doing what she's best at "� marketing. She specialised in marketing from Mumbai University and started her career at CNBC India. Later, at Sony Entertainment Television she worked with MAX, the movies, events and sports channel. More recently, Picardo was employed at ATN which is among the largest south Asian TV channels in the UK and Europe.

Reality TV is run by the UK-based Zone Vision Enterprises Ltd, which was set up in 1991. By 1998 the company managed to launch five thematic channel brands, including Reality TV, Europa Europa, Romatica and Showtime. The company is also actively involved in channel representation, studio productions and other interactive services. Based in London, Picardo is not complaining about her new job as it will allow her to do what she loves "� travel.

The mentor

He was an entrepreneur. Now he's a mentor. M Chandrasekaran (Shekar to his friends), the founder chairman of technology company Impulsesoft and the founder director of Aztec Software and Technical Services, has held several top jobs. He's an advisor to ICICI Infotech and from 1997-2002, was corporate advisor to Sasken Communication Technologies, a company that develops telecom industry software.

Till recently, he also was a member of the senior advisory board of ChrysCapital, the venture capital company, and has been promoting the idea of setting up an MBA programme for working software engineers at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Yet ironically, he was unemployed in India for quite some months. And there hangs a tale. Armed with an engineering degree and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), he began his career with Indian Tube Co (the Tata company) at Jamshedpur. The next stop was Tanzania in the late seventies when that country was like India before 1991"�socialist and highly regulated. He was the CEO of two industrial undertakings that were part of Aluminium Africa Limited, Tanzania, from 1979-85. It is there he learnt a most important lesson.

"Successful management is all about facilitating the growth of team members. A manager's first job is to ensure that his team members grow and fulfil their potential. As that happens, the success of the team as well as that of the manager automatically follows," says Chandrasekaran.

His next stop was as an industrial advisor "� appointed by the World Bank "� to the Tanzania Investment Bank from 1985-1991. Here he helped small companies which had unusual products attract funding. In 1991, he returned home after 12 years overseas "� and was jobless for some 10 months, a period during which his wife Chandrika stood by him through thick and thin. "I guess that my experience in Tanzania did not qualify me to get a job immediately. Anyway, I also was not keen on picking up a job for the sake of job," recalls Chandrasekaran.

That's when he bumped into T V Mohandas Pai (then executive director of Prakash Leasing and now chief financial officer of Infosys Technologies).

Pai pointed out that the future of India lay in the IT industry. He put him in touch with Pratip Kar, boss of the Bangalore-based Microland which was then a little known company with a turnover of around Rs 5 crore. Chandrasekaran became the CEO of Microland "� and thus began a love affair with the IT industry. From 1995 till now, he has been founding technology companies and sometimes stepping out of them. The Impulsesoft chairman recently stepped down from the board of Aztec Software after a seven-year stint. Chandrasekaran is grateful to Pai for introducing him to people in the tech industry.

So why does he step down from the boards of many of the companies he helped found? "You should know when to leave," he says seriously. "Every product comes with an expiry date," he adds. What of the future? Chandrasekaran has been happiest mentoring young people in the software industry. At 55, it's a role he wants to continue playing.