Sethu Meenakshisundaram is President of SAP Mobile Services (Sybase 365), the global leader in enabling mobile interconnect, mobile engagement and mobile insight services for mobile operators, financial institutions and enterprises. With more than 25 years of experience in enterprise products and business, Sethu spent the majority of his career at Sybase as Chief Product Officer, building world-class OLTP and OLAP database systems that powers majority of the trading systems in capital markets.

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Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Sethu starts the show off with his mantra: “I want to make complex things simple, and simple things automatic” and what inspired him to chase this passion. Sethu has a mindset that failure is always an option, and it is not a failure but is actually a step towards growth. Coming from a huge family and with simple beginnings, he shares how trials and tribulations had helped him grow and why Kung Fu Panda is one of his heroes.

Sethu has 250 warriors with different passions but works for a collective purpose. He shares that things will always be stressful but they are always happy and have inner peace. Sethu also talks about their business model, the power of their reach, why nobody can beat them and about an interesting little island call Kiribati.

He explains why hyper-connectivity is critical to the world’s mobile subscribers and the thing to focus on more than things such as VR. He elaborates that this is because of how the technology can help make people’s lives better by helping them in managing their money better, for example, thereby bringing in more value.

Interesting topics he had heard during last year’s Mobile World Congress including drone technology and AI but he shares his slight disappointment as well due to the fact that it did not bring big impacts to developing countries. Seamless payment services, education through connectivity would have been great items for the Mobile World Congress to meet their social responsibility.

Discover how mobile is ubiquitous and have a direct impact bringing people and technology together across the world. IoT (Internet of Things) is virtualizing all network operations coupled with the gamut of solutions provided by the SAP platform.

Rapid Fire Questions

• What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is to make complex things simple and simple things automatic.

• Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

For the past three years, we have established a strategy and a vision and we have been laser focused on executing so we realized that vision. I would say 30% strategy and 70% execution is crucial.

• What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

To be more humble every day. Just because you are leader and have attained your dream, it does not mean that you should be arrogant.

• What is your favorite business book?

The Purpose-Driven Business

• What is your favorite digital resource?

SMS features in phones

• What is your favorite app and why?

Soduko and other brain games

Candy Crush

Mekorama