Bhasker Sharma, CEO, Net Brahma Technologies, has been involved in four start-up initiatives in the last six years. He tells Valentina Hubert that luck and family support are the reasons for his success

In mid-1998 when the Microland Group was looking at building a software business, Bhasker Sharma was one name that Pradeep Kar was interested in. Unable to resist the challenge of using his experience and expertise in the software industry to build a software engineering organisation from scratch, Sharma took up the offer. The rest is history. “The idea of working on the then emerging Internet technologies, in addition to communications and networking software, excited me and I joined Microland as Vice President, Software Engineering,” says Sharma, CEO of Net Brahma Technologies.

Sharma considers himself an entrepreneur within the Microland umbrella. “Microland has enabled me to achieve my dream of being able to create and build an Indian organisation in the area of communication and networking software. I have set myself goals for professional growth and have usually been able to achieve them,” he says.

When the Internet Application Group of Microland Software Services got merged into Planetasia in June 2000 it was decided to create the Networking Software Group as a separate entity. Bekay and Pradeep Kar, co-founders of Microland, and Sharma felt that there was a great business opportunity to create a unique Indian organisation focused on building software blocks for the rapidly increasing makers of next generation Internet infrastructure. “We brainstormed about the name - several were discarded due to unavailability of the URL. Finally we zoomed in on Net Brahma - we were creating a new organisation, we were building software that would help create the next generation communications and networking equipment. I am proud and happy to say that I created the name and then with the help from designers within the Microland Group, we created the logo.” The race was against time as they had fixed the external launch date for the new entity and a lot of subsequent activities depended on the name and the logo. “It was several 20hours+ days for me during the lead up to the launch of Net Brahma in July 2000,” says Sharma.

According to Sharma, Net Brahma has met and even exceeded the objectives that had been set for the first few months of the organisation. In the eight months since its creation, Net Brahma has worked with several leading next generation equipment companies, raised US $2 million funding from JP Morgan Partners, has become an independent company and built first releases of products in the areas of MPLS, DiffServ, SNMP, MGCP.

Though hailing from a middle class family in Tamil Nadu, Bhasker grew up near Rishikesh in UP and the name Sarma changed to Sharma. With a natural inclination towards Mathematics and Electronics since his school days, Sharma went on to earn his BE (Electrical and Electronics) from BITS, Pilani and ME Automation from IISc, Bangalore. “I joined the Tata Burroughs Ltd. in Bombay from campus. TBL was one of the pioneering software export organisations in those days. I spent 13 years there moving from a pure technical (programmer) role to a techno-commercial role (Program Manager). There was enormous learning in terms of technologies, people as well as cultures since I worked out of Bombay as well as locations in Europe and the US,” says Sharma. In 1994, he moved to a start-up called 3SE in Bangalore — a different kind of company promoted by DOE and the European Commission, but things didn’t work out there and he moved on to head CoSystems India - a communications protocol software company. In this position Sharma oversaw the software engineering of data communications and of telecommunications protocol software technologies such as PPP, V5.2, Frame Relay, ISDN, L2TP for the parent company in Sunnyvale, as well as for the sales of these technologies in the South Asian region.

Sharma admits that he has a successful career. “Building an organisation is fun. This has in a way affected my family more than me. Another thing is that it has made me think often about the contrasting economic levels we have in our country and also the digital divide.” He attributes the environment in which he was brought up — the family values, the importance of being sincere and committed — as the major motivating factor in his life. “Certainly luck, getting the right opportunities at the right time and guidance and support from family have played a big part too, I would certainly not be where I am if not for the guidance of my parents and the unstinted support of my wife who has perhaps made more sacrifices than I have. In the last six years I have been involved in four start-up initiatives often working 60+ hours every week for several months at a stretch and venting my frustrations on my family members,” admits Sharma.

“I have not been able to spend as much time with my family as I would like to and personal interests like travelling and reading (for pleasure) have also taken a back seat. I like to teach and one of my goals is to be a part-time faculty — a goal that is yet to be realised,” rues Sharma. His leisure time involves travelling, spending time with his wife and kids, and specially teaching his children sports. “I would like to contribute to society by getting involved in an adult literacy initiative,” he reveals.

Sharma has also been a people’s man. “My philosophy has been to constantly interact with employees at all levels to understand their aspirations and issues but at the same time give them the freedom to perform and make decisions.” He believes in providing continually challenging work, setting clear goals, providing the environment and tools for the employees to achieve their goals. He is satisfied with his achievements and has no regrets in life. But he thinks the best is yet to come.

“Net Brahma’s vision is to be a leading supplier of communication technologies to the global market place while becoming an employer of choice in India. We are working on exciting customer projects as well as building products and solutions in the areas of IP Internetworking (routing, tunnelling, traffic engineering, optical control plane etc.), convergence (access and soft switch protocols), network management, embedded systems and hardware design and verification.”

For Sharma, his success hinges on achieving this vision. He aims to build Net Brahma into a world-class technology organisation and create value for all stakeholders (customers, investors, employees) within the next two years. As always, to realise these goals his best bet is `people’.