Lakshmanan Ramaswamy, India

Life and career are always only as good as what we make of it. Kickstarting my professional life at Infosys BPM in 2002, then known as Progeon, my learnings often took a philosophical tone. My personal and professional lives merged, such that I fell in love with my work, as an extension of my life.

I joined the organization as a fresh graduate, with a drive to build a meaningful career. My mentors at Infosys BPM consistently recognized that drive and invested in me. Various leadership training programs, such as the Middle Management Leadership, Club Fuel, and Higher Education Program, which also helped me in completing my PG in Management, shaped my journey at Infosys BPM.

I have grown as a professional and as a person, since I took the reins of one of the first accounts of Progeon as a Process Executive. The zeal of growing with the organization led me to take up multiple roles after handling the first account. My growth trajectory at Infosys BPM was a case of meteoric progress and I went on from being a Process Executive to Subject Matter Expert, Trainer, Team Lead, Assistant Manager, Ops Manager, Sr. Manager, and then to COH. Today, I have grown to manage an entire center as the DC head and Domain Principal for S&F practice.

In 2004, when Infosys BPM inaugurated its second center at Pune, I decided to move to work out of the new center. Probably the best decision of my life, even though I was relocating away from my hometown Bangalore. The experience shaped me in several ways, especially in my leadership roles. It was meant to be a short-term stint at best. But year after year the rewards of hard work kept pouring in and I landed up spending most of the formative years of my career in Pune. Twelve years, to be precise.

There were challenges, of course. There were failures too. But, as we keep learning, our journey only gets better. The learnings and opportunities I was exposed to, by the good fortune of working beside the best of minds, fueled my drive further. I honed my leadership skills in this phase. Nurturing strong teams, focusing on execution, and managing independently. I managed multiple role transitions, contributed to building a large account, and developed a strong leadership pipeline.

At an early stage, when the industry was moving towards domain capability, I got opportunities to upskill my knowledge with the Pilot Practice Ambassador Program, Pilot Benchmarking Exercise and various other domain training certifications from IIM-B and CII. This helped me in navigating seamlessly from Transactions to Processes, and then to Domain and Business Outcome service delivery models for our clients.

While Pune was great, I decided to move to Chennai in 2016, when one more opportunity knocked. I was to be the Domain Principal for the S&F practice, and the Head for Chennai DC as well. I still hope to go back to my hometown Bangalore, someday, probably when the right opportunity comes by.