I joined Cimpress ( then Vistaprint ) as Head of Technology in 2012 . I was excited about the opportunity because of the following three reasons
- It was greenfield meaning I will be choose my team
- It was in e-commerce space . I had never worked in that space
- It was Indian market
This was compelling enough for me to embark upon this journey and make a difference. I was hired by Bernie Barbour & his fellow pals from Europe Engineering groups. Bernie then was leading a team of committed people from Vistaprint in setting up new operations in India post acquisition. When I say new operation it implies setting up whole new business along side plant operations in personalized print space using Mass Customization stack available at Vistaprint!
Since then Bernie [ now Head of Mass Customization Platforms(MCP) at Cimpress Technology ] has been part of my professional life like a constant. While I write this , you will find the equivalence of this in E = mc^2 (German-born physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity that expresses the fact that mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be changed into each other). I have been lucky to have this as coincidence because it is always tough to find such long time partners as an individual , team member and leader within a company.
I contributed and led the technology and product landscape for Vistaprint India technology operations including production tech working on different aspects of e-commerce , supply chain , infrastructure. Given the success in India , the pattern was repeated in Japan , & I was called in to hire as well groom the technology team in Japan that could work independently for Vistaprint Japan. The journey every year was exciting doing different things in India & Japan in space of e-commerce & retail store formats . It was all new for me. When I joined Vistaprint in 2012 , I had always been working for global companies but Vistaprint was becoming a global company not from the sense of having offices in different parts of the world but actually doing business in different parts of the world with localized manufacturing. Next stop was China where I got ability to sit with different stakeholders to look at the market and see how we could integrate mass customization in retail store format with marquee brands. First 4 years were a great learning experience for me. I was excited about building my culture map at global scale thanks to Vistaprint. During these 4 years Bernie & I kept crossing paths bringing engineering and expertise to the region all across time zones starting from US to Asia Pacific!
Images are tell-tales and so are the above one’s through my eventful journey of setting up retail store in Pune for Vistaprint India to Japan operations. Core Team of Vistaprint India led by Nilesh Parwani – serial entrepreneur , whose start-up was the reason India happened to the Boss doing his inspections in Japan 🙂 . I picked great friends in India and across the globe like Chirag Bhuva , Sandeep K , Jitendra Dadhich , Mahesh Shenoy , Rene Kuipers , Conrado & Saigni Ramesh! Met some fine technology leaders like Maarten , Jim , Satish , Marco & Melissa !
Late of 2016 , I started to shift gears at Vistaprint , many acquisitions had been made and we were moving aggressively towards a platform hypothesis as well we transformed into what I was part of that is Cimpress. Core tech needed to expand rapidly and there were a increased desire to start looking at rethinking e-commerce stack across various businesses to speed up out ability for a vertical integration and create network effect across multiple markets.
Boston Days with Sagini , David , Stuart 
Simon and his team at Tradeprint
Again Bernie came into picture and this time the challenge was to create a ground up engineering team that can help create a new multi-tenant e-commerce platform which help us transform the businesses and move them to more modern day world of API-first / data driven architecture. This started my next 4 years time travel at Cimpress. I started to work very closely with businesses In Europe and my attention shifted from Asia Pacific to European businesses. From building the team in India to working a new platform , developing hypothesis and launching it in UK for Tradeprint was a a crazy ride for people around me!
Picked great buddies like Dan Wakabayashi , Kara H , Ashley , Markus T , Michael T , Ryan B , Vikram , Nirav , Cory , Mukul , David Goldman , Rod Scrimgeour , Alan Livie , Stuart Ebdy , Steven Hammond , Ben Hudson , Christian Maas , Henk & Galina. I continue to have great personal relationships with each one of them ! Many more in India like Ameya s , Gurinder Singh , Shekhar S , Sumit S , Himaunshu , Gaurang , Doede , Vinay , Dhaval , Aman , Rohan S , Samyak M , Ankur T , Amit P , Kunjal , Priyanka , Deepa , Prasanna , Rohit , Sharlet , Yogendra , Chandra , Vishwas , Pranav P , Tanu R, Ankush K, Satish , Prasenjit , Hardik , Manoj , Ramya , Vedant , Prateek … there are 100 plus great people from whom I have learned a lot from our India Engineering Centre across Mumbai and Bangalore !!! It is hard to enlist everybody but I have huge respect for every individual who has worked with me !!
Many such memories , events and occurrences , also gave me the ability to run for a marathon in Paris ! ( never ran in my life before now I run three times a week ) , all inspired by Kees Andres , whom I revere and respect a lot for astute business sense and eye for correct details.
Paris Marathon 2017 
Christian , Kees & me
Over the course of last 8 years , I have built more than once teams suited to different purposes from running business centric technology to e-commerce , marketing and storefront tech every time bringing on amazing talent which is smart , level headed and come with “get shit done” moto.
My lessons learnt from famous book Making of a Manager are here:
Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.
The first big part of your job as a manager is to ensure that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it.
Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.
Today, my job looks very different than when I started. Every time I’ve given a piece of it away, I’ve discovered that there was ever more to take on. As long as you continue to be motivated by your purpose, as long as your aspirations extend beyond what your team is currently capable of, as long as you can see new challenges on the horizon, then there’s opportunity for you to have more impact. Often, this means doing new things that you’re not very good at yet.
The act of constantly trying to replace yourself means that you create openings to stretch both your leaders and yourself. Right ahead is another mountain that’s bigger and scarier than the one before. Everyone keeps climbing, and everyone achieves more together.
Leadership is a quality, not a job
& none the least many of my famous quotes given on our printing platform as gift by my AWESOME team !
Cimpress Technology & Cimpress India provided me right level of autonomy to try new things , create new software , run technology organization and making me a Global Software Engineering Leader! I can only be thankful! I hope I am able to create success and get same environment in different context as I reset to paint the canvas again !
As I look back standing now in 2020 , a strange year for entire world! I do not want to say much but only be grateful to God for providing us spiritual strength which is helping us endure and keep moving forward.
Everyday Reflections 
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