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Partners in Progress
The adage, "Too many cooks spoil the broth", might not necessarily ring true in today's corporate scenario as several like-minded people are coming together on a common platform and are co-founding and co-heading successful ventures. Priya C. Nair chats up with a few entrepreneurs who share common goals
When two minds think alike...
David Perla and Sanjay Kamlani, co-founders and co-CEOs of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm are best friends. "When we began our careers in New York, we shared an apartment. By late 2003, David was working as a general counsel (a general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation) for monster and I was the general counsel and CFO at Office Tiger, a multi-national professional support services outsourcing company," says Kamlani. Since they were shouldering similar responsibilities in different companies, they could connect with each other on an intellectual and a professional level. They started talking about the difficulties and challenges that general counsels in large corporate counsel departments face and discussed ways in which building dedicated teams of lawyers in India to support US in-house counsels could be a great value proposition. These discussions, eventually, led to the initiation of Pangea3. "Our friendship, backgrounds, and shared interests in doing something very different and dynamic in the legal industry, particularly pertaining to the growing budgetary and effective practice of law problems of in-house counsels, made us come together with common goals, "believes Kamlani.
Though Perla and Kamlani have shared interests, they had divided official responsibilities among themselves, tactfully and even communicated the same to their shareholders, employees, clients, service providers and the market space where they operate. While Perla is responsible for the front end of the business, both geographically and functionally; this includes business development and marketing and also being responsible for the activities in the United States and Europe, Kamlani is taking care of the operations/delivery part of the business, besides shouldering all the other activities in India. "With our business spilt over two geographies, our mutual co-CEO relationship enables an owner or chief to be present on both sides of the business, at all times. We also create a very healthy tension between sales and operations, where both sides are pushing each other to grow fast and remain on top of the industry, in all respects," says Kamlani.
From the beginning, they have never let their work-related differences interfere with their personal lives. "David and I can disagree vehemently on a professional or company related matter and thereafter, enjoy a drink together and laugh. We achieved a natural groove a long time ago, separating professional/business related matters from our personal friendship. The trust that we have built as friends facilitates our ability to feel good and confident, thus disallowing inevitable professional disagreements to interfere,” says Kamlani.
...towards a common goal
Anil Chalamalasetty, co-Founder and CEO and Mahesh Kolli, co-Founder and president of Greenko Group met in the UK, in late 90s, through common friends and since then, even though they were involved with different organisations, maintained a good relationship and shared their thoughts and views on various business models, time and again. “Post the dotcom era, we both were keen to get involved in the long term infrastructure play in India. Along with the growth in the country, there were growing demands for developing more infrastructure facilities. And as water and electricity from the basis of developing these facilities we decided to get into generating electricity through renewable sources,” says Kolli.
“We did extensive research and analysis for about two years towards creating new market places in the climate change domain and looked for opportunities in India’s strong energy markets. Thus Greenko Group was started in 2006 with a vision to be the most admired and respected clean energy company, making a significant contribution to counter the challenges of climate change, faced by our planet,” adds Kolli. According to Kolli, the opportunities to build something and grow are higher when two people can share the responsibilities because you can take ownership of domains in which you have the expertise, at the same time knowing that your partner can handle other areas, more competently. “When fundamentally strong personal equation forms the basis for a professional partnership, the strength of the relationship is drawn from higher levels of trust, mutual respect and understanding of one another’s competencies. The ability to compliment each other on the work front helps in achieving higher goals,” opines Kolli.
But working together also brings in certain challenges also especially when the clarity of roles gets misplaced and when the individuals do not have the maturity to recognise and resolve the differences. “In the case of Greenko, we have a clear understanding and respect for each other’s strengths,” adds Kolli.
A like-minded approach
3D Solid Compression (3DSoC), an interactive 3D modeling company was formed by four people who were academically associated with each other. India Institute of Science, Bangalore was the meeting place of K K Venkatramana, co-founder and CEO, Dr Krishnan Ramaswami, co-Founder and CTO, Prof B Gurumoorthy, co-founder and Chairman and Prof Fritz Prinz, co founder of 3DSoc. Gurumoorthy had done his PhD with Prinz and later Ramaswami and Venkatramana completed their Masters in Mechanical Engineering from IISc, under the guidance of Gurumoorthy.
Around 2002, Prinz, Gurumoorthy and Krishnan came together for a research project and during the course, they realised that they needed to transfer large 3D models, over the internet. They began work on light weight 3D representations, that eventually, resulted into Virtual Interactive Solid (VIS). VIS technology helps in reducing the file size between 10 to 40 times over comparable representations used for 3D visualisation and about 100 times over Computer-aided design (CAD) representation and it is smaller than the JPEG or JPEG or GIF images. It was patented in 2004 and they realized that there could be a lot of commercial application for this technology and thus 3DSoc was formally registered. Later, Venkatramana also joined the endeavour.
The journey so far has been fruitful. There can be a lot of value add from each other as each individual has strengths in their own respective field which can prove very beneficial for the organisation,” says Venkatramana. Adding to it, he suggests that the best way to handle any difference of opinion is to keep your professional and personal relationships separate. The situation has to be dealt with a lot of maturity. Since they knew each other from their academic days, it is easy for them to accept and respect each other’s differences and work together.
We all have heard of the adage, “a friend in need is a friend in-deed” and these entrepreneurs are just translating its meaning into real-time application.
About Pangea3 LLC
Pangea3 is the recognized global leader in legal process outsourcing (LPO), providing outsourced legal, patent and IP technical support services to U.S. corporations and law firms. The company combines top talent -- lawyers, engineers and technologists in the U.S. and India -- with a secure global technology infrastructure in order to provide low-cost, high-quality legal support services to a global client base. Pangea3 is headquartered in New York City and Mumbai, India. For more information, visit http://www.pangea3.com/
Website: http://www.pangea3.com/
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