POSITION PLACED: Managing Director

Executive summary

Ketera Technologies is the leading provider of ‘on demand’ Spend Management Solutions. Since its inception in 2002, Ketera has enabled spend management initiatives for more than fifty clients with and has processed more than $107B through spend management service. Ketera’s senior management believed that Ketera should have their own engineering centre in India to effectively leverage the high quality skills available. Ketera planned to set up its own engineering centre in India, and required a General Manager (India) to head and run it.

The challenge was to find someone familiar with Silicon Valley start-up culture and located in India. The role required the candidate to have very strong management skills, particularly marketing skills. We successfully shortlisted about 20 candidates for Ketera and finally zeroed in on the 'right' candidate for Ketera who had worked in the US for a long time, had been through start-ups, and possessed strong marketing and people management skills, as well as a good understanding of product development challenges.

About Ketera Technologies

Ketera Technologies is the leading provider of ‘on demand’ Spend Management Solutions. Since its inception in 2002, Ketera has enabled spend management initiatives for more than fifty clients has enabled more than fifty clients with spend management initiatives and has processed more than $107B through spend management service. Ketera Technologies is now part of Rearden Commerce, a next-generation eCommerce platform company. Ketera is a private company located in Santa Clara, CA. Investors in the company include Kliener Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, Integral Capital Partners and American Express.

Background

Ketera had been outsourcing product development to a company in India and had 80 engineers working exclusively on their product with the outsourcer. Ketera’s senior management believed that India has an excellent pool of engineers with relevant experience. They also believed that Ketera needed to have their own engineering center in India to effectively leverage the high quality skills available there.

Ketera planned to set up its own engineering center in India, and required a General Manager (India) to head and run it.

The challenge in this search was to find someone who had worked in a Silicon Valley start-up and therefore understood the work culture well while being located in India. Also, this person needed to have a very strong management skills, particularly marketing skills.

We successfully shortlisted a candidate for Ketera who had worked in the US for a long time, had been through start-ups, and possessed strong marketing, and people management skills, as well as a good understanding of product development challenges. He had moved to India a year before we approached him, and was therefore quite familiar with the Bangalore environment.

The Search Challenge – AnuPartha’s Perspective

Anu Parthasarathy

This assignment proved to me, yet again, that systematic processes actually help deliver significant results. As a part of the process of creating a profile description for this position, we worked on a detailed objective matrix for the responsibilities that this position entailed. From this exercise we concluded that one of the key roles requirements of this position was to recruit and retain a high quality engineering team. This would require significant marketing skills in positioning and branding Ketera in India as a preferred employer. We therefore believed that Ketera needed a strong business head who could manage engineering and not necessarily an engineering head with business aptitude. This was a big shift in approach which the client agreed to. This process of fine-tuning the required profile helped us find the best fit among short listed candidates very quickly.

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Client's Feedback

Raj Shah, Vice President of Engineering, Ketera Technologies

When I first started talking to Anu about this position, what struck me the most was that Anu is very efficient, and responsive. She showed a lot of flexibility in her work – be it in price, scheduling meetings, or talking to candidates.

In any senior executive search process, moving quickly is the key – closing a position within a quarter is important – otherwise interest wanes and one tends to compromise with the position. Anu really understands this well, and was very efficient and professional in the search – a 100% committed to it till completion.
Her efficiency shows in different ways. She was always keen on having face-to-face meetings with me, rather than just talk on the phone or exchange emails. That must have made a difference. As a result of our discussions, we probably were able to work through our strategy and get to our profile accurately, and quickly. In terms of process, there are a couple of things that stood out – one was a detailed exercise she went through, of creating a profile matrix – actually putting in writing all the criteria for the profile, and assigning weightages to them. Not just the finished matrix, but the process of going through this exercise really helped everybody get clear in their minds on the specific requirements for the position.

The other thing I was impressed with was the way Anu gauged the interest level of a candidate in actually working in India. Most of the 20 odd candidates first short listed were based in the US, and evinced some interest in relocating to India, but the extent of their commitment to relocating was not clear. Anu was smart in figuring this out skilfully by talking to the candidates, and to their families as well – she could now easily tell how “real” their readiness to relocate was. We again saved a lot of time we would otherwise have wasted courting candidates not eventually willing to make the move.

Also, Anu’s understanding of the cross-border model does help. It is like talking to someone from one’s own industry, or work culture, or fraternity – they just get it!
Finally, a big strength I think is Anu’s spot-on instinct – she has a very good feel for which candidate would be a good fit.