I recently read an interesting blog post that made an analogy between the word "entrepreneur" and the Sanskrit words "antar" (inner) and "prerna" (inspiration). Why do I mention this? Soon after, I interacted with Srimathi Prasad, founder and director of Prudenté Solution Pvt. Ltd., and hearing her career story led me to believe that truly, entrepreneurs are people who follow their inner voice, come what may.

Backing entrepreneurship with a strong skill set

After graduating in electrical engineering from BMS College, (Bangalore), Prasad worked as an engineer with MICO for eleven years upto 1990. At the time, India's IT revolution was in its nascent stages. Nonetheless, making an accurate assessment of the bright future of the sector, Prasad decided she needed to improve her skill sets in order to move to a mainstream IT company. She was 33 and married with a 7 year old child, but determined to face the odds. So she sat for GRE and TOEFL, and successfully gained admission to the State University of New York, Stony Brook for a Masters degree.

Eighteen months later, she returned to India and her family, still not to set herself up as an entrepreneur, but to gain valuable industry experience that would stand her in good stead in her future endeavors. Fortunately, she landed a job with HCL-HP and was deputed to HP's Firmware Development division in Cupertino (USA). On returning from there she worked with Hewlett Packard Software Operations in Bangalore, to develop firmware for Ford's powertrain systems. But Prasad soon opted to rotate to other teams, and continued to gain from the exposure and opportunity to acquire cross functional skills in IT.

Starting small

It was in 2000 after the Y2K boom, a time when she says, "dot com was envisaged as the next wave to ride on," that she made a crucial decision. Hacker activities were coming to the fore, and therefore, the security of data throughout its life cycle - during storage, transportation, usage and destruction - had become of paramount concern. Prasad determined this was the field to be in - and founded Prudenté as a company that would specialize in the niche sector of security.

In its first phase, Prudente only catered to the domestic market. The going wasn't easy - it had to face competition from other well-established product vendors who dealt in boxed solutions or appliances, and consumer awareness of the data security sector was low.

Strategizing to make a mark

It was imperative that they come up with a strategy to get through the testing times. Prasad deduced that differentiating their services from the prevailing competition would be the best way forward - this led to Prudenté taking on an additional advisory role to acquire customers who would benefit from the dual services of security consultation and an appropriate solution.

"Attracting good security resources was another big challenge as these new markets were witnessing a dearth of skilled job aspirants," says Prasad. Once again, Prudenté converted this problem into a solution, quite literally, as it sought to build these competencies in-house through training and certification programs.

Prasad herself trained to become a Certified Information Systems Security Practitioner (CISSP) and an approved trainer in the British Standards Institute BS7799 standard for information security management. Other members of her team acquired security product certifications.

Innovations help hold onto a customer base

In time, Prudente made a mark for itself and captured a fair share of the growing information security market. But having signed on a plethora of new clients it faced a new challenge - of customers not readily willing to pay for services, and who negotiated hard on the prices of products. Once again, the teams' focus turned towards leveraging the existing competencies by offering services that could be offered to international customers - consultancy, auditing services, implementation services, monitoring and management services, penetration testing and vulnerability testing.

Today, the 20-people strong team is poised for exponential growth in the international sector. Prasad has prudently (pun unintended) restructured Prudenté's service basket for this expansion, by adding IT consultancy and remote management services to its kitty. "These services," she opines, "can easily be outsourced and as India is known the world over for its IT skills, I believe these new additions will help us grow the company further. By partnering and providing delivery support to security vendors who are already established in overseas geographies, we will allow them to concentrate on scaling up their core business."

A woman entrepreneur

If you think of it, and Prasad seconds this contention, information security is largely a male dominated high-technology segment. Nevertheless, Prasad has never felt intimidated by this fact perhaps because she has held her own against men since her student life. "Studying in an engineering college in the late seventies when there were only a handful of women in the college prepared me to handle such situations. In fact, MICO [her first employer] refused to interview us on the campus as they had a policy not to hire women. I challenged them, saying that if we had successfully competed with men and completed our degree, why should we be discriminated against by the industry?"

Her stand made a difference - three months later, MICO came back with a new policy and hired Prasad as one of its first lady engineers. All said and done, Prasad believes the IT industry is a conducive place for women to work - whether in an employee or entrepreneurial capacity.

Spearheading Internet learning

Over the years, Prasad has not only applied her technology and project management skills to grow her own company, but has lent considerable support to an NGO - SchoolsOnline - that works to setup Internet learning centers in economically backward schools. SchoolsOnline was setup with the aim of assisting schools use Internet technology as a teaching and learning aid. Two years on, the programme was absorbed as the Digital Equalizer project of the American India Foundation, an India-centric organization that wanted to scale up SchoolsOnline pan India.

Prasad played an active role, akin to a director, in giving the programme direction and establishing appropriate Indian partnerships to scale it up, as she quite literally managed the project for 2-3 years from her Prudenté office. Her efforts to enable the deployment of technology, train teachers and students, set program targets and ensure that the usage of technology becomes a culture paid off - by 2007, the 60 school program of SchoolsOnline had been extended to about 1500 schools! Much like Prudenté in the IT business sector, this just goes to show how far a woman can stretch her skills to make a difference. So long, we might add, as she means business! 

Charu Bahri is an author, freelance writer, columnist and [part-time] manager - projects and information systems at J Watumull Global Hospital & Research Centre. More about her at http://charubahri.googlepages.com

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