Veera Budhi grew up in the West African country of Benin. Born in India, he moved back for his secondary education. He received his Bachelor of Computer Science from Bharathidasan University, and then his Master of Computer Science from the University of Madras.
Having grown up with parents who owned their own business, Veera had good business acumen. While in school, Veera had several side jobs to earn extra money. He first started selling sarees door-to-door, letting housewives buy them full price or on an installment basis. He then sold newspapers door-to-door, getting people to sign up for subscriptions. He found he was successful at marketing these longer-term investments.
Later, he and some friends decided to start a dance company. They would choreograph dances and teach them to people for events. Veera’s dancing skills lead him to enter competitions where he earned a number of awards for his talent. Along with dancing, he was very much into fitness. His friend owned a gym so he spent a lot of time working out and eventually became a personal trainer.
Veera’s passions, at this time, put him in the right position to become an actor, as his family had great connections in the South Indian film industry. He was passionate and interested but people around him did not consider acting and dancing to be of high stature or sustainable. He was discouraged from doing either, so he redirected his attention to focus on his education.
His first job out of school was with a company working with legacy Oracle technologies. He started as a developer, became a team lead and eventually project manager. The problem, he realized, was that project managers dealt less with technology and more with people. He really wanted to stick with technology. He decided to move into an architect role, which would allow him to work with newer, different technologies. Architects figure out how different systems can integrate together.
With this skill set, Veera decided to become a consultant which allowed him to travel internationally. He started in the United States for three years, then went to Dubai for five years, and then the UK for a year. He finally made his way back to the US, and has been here for thirteen years. He started as a consultant for American Stock Exchange. During his tenure, he was approached by IBM to work on Hadoop and product sales. They also wanted him to write a book about data streaming technology. That book was published and pushed Veera to stardom in the big data community.
Things moved quickly once the book was released. Veera moved into big data sales at IBM, his first time in product sales. He also worked in the big data practice at Cognizant, Hortonworks and IBM once again. He found an enjoyment for open source Hadoop technology, and spent some years working on it. He also spent time working with cloud and analytics, and Watson Data and AI.
Once again, a former co-worker reached out to him about a new opportunity. This was about an open position at Saggezza. It would be a team lead role in which all of his years of product selling, service selling, Hadoop, and cloud experience would come together and allow him to evolve. Two things pushed him to join Saggezza: 1.) He would be able to work on different technologies, which was always his goal and passion, and 2.) The culture of Saggezza allowed him better opportunity and growth. He could leverage his experience to grow along with the organization, and take himself and his team to the next level.
He was a big fan of the author John Maxwell and decided to join his team to teach his leadership principles to corporations. Veera became certified in Maxwell’s leadership skills and presented at all kinds of corporate engagements. Through these engagements, Veera wrote his own book on leadership titled, “Be the CEO of Your Life: 7 Ways to Invest in Yourself and Transform Your Career”.
Veera has always been very social and engaged in his career. He is part of Chief Data and Chief Marketing Officer groups, attends networking events, and even organized meetups for several years. He loves collaborating, and that is one of his favorite parts about working at Saggezza. He recently celebrated his one year anniversary, and looks forward to many more to come.
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