Vidhi (PFM 2008-2010) is a Senior Manager at Capgemini,India. She has 11+ years of experience working as a Senior Solution Architect in the Cloud and Infrastructure domain. Her current role focuses on building strong and competitive solutions for the customers across multiple domains – Manufacturing, Retail, and Insurance. She is also actively involved in defining new capabilities aligned to market growth which can be adopted well by the delivery teams. Prior to this, Vidhi has worked as Global Bid Manager with Infosys Technologies in Cloud and Infrastructure domain. Her specialization includes requirement gathering, creating RFP responses and providing solutions in SIAM (Service Integration and Management) area.
On the personal front, she a great passion for the Arts. To fulfill her inner desire, she actively creates varied art pieces across different art forms.
Linkedin ID- https://www.linkedin.com/in/vidhi10/
Insta handle- https://www.instagram.com/vidhi.s.batra/
Q. How has been your journey from IIFM to this role?
A. My placement with Sambodhi Research and Communications is still fresh in my memory. It was a dream come true to be placed in my hometown with a company established by IIFM’ites. I joined as Deputy Manager and in a span of 1.5 years, I got the best exposure on multiple UN-funded projects across India. Field visits to Bhubaneshwar, UP, etc were truly an eye-opener when we visited the rural places to evaluate the various projects across the livelihood sector. Special thanks to Kultar Singh (PFM 98-2000 and co-founder of Sambodhi) for considering me for those projects. It was a truly enriching and fun experience working for such a nice organization, surrounded by IIFM’ites. Then I moved to DOT Technologies for a very short span to get exposure to the IT world. My personal commitment pushed me for this switch in the role but there has been no looking back to my career since then.
Later I got a very exciting offer from Infosys in 2012, incidentally coinciding with my 1st marriage anniversary and making it more special. It was a different rigor with which teams used to work at an extremely fast pace where various collaborations happened along the way. I donned multiple hats of Bid Manager, Proposal Manager, Commercial analyst all in one pre-sales role. Working with people across the globe gave me great exposure and upskilled me to solutions role with multiple discussions with SME’s in a Bid manager role. I wanted to roll up my sleeves, try out a new set of skills, and work with a new set of stakeholders as an Architect. I devoted a lot of extra time to learn technical skills and expanded my horizon substantially. Then came an offer from Capgemini, a company that not only embraces your skillset but also values diversity across countries. Since 2016 I have tried my hands on solutions for RFP’s/ RFI’s, developing capability offering, process consultancy for one of the Fortune 500 clients in Europe, and many more exciting roles. As a part of the Capgemini family, every day I have a new set of challenges and complexities from the client’s environment which not only sharpens’ s my skills but also makes me more innovative.
Q. What were some of the key milestones/learning in this journey that you would like to share with us?
A. Receiving my first job offer with Sambodhi Research and Communications and entering the new professional world were certainly the biggest milestones of all. Another milestone was the reward at Capgemini for “Most Positive influencer “on Women’s Day. It truly gives a sense of accomplishment when people acknowledge your work. And above all when I was blessed with my son in 2013. He is the key reason for my continuous learning.
Q. What is your typical day at the office?
A. There is one mission in my role – Bring the deal home! and win more and more new logos.
Being a Global Solution Architect, I generally don’t have a fixed start time or end time. I sometimes start the day at 6 am in the morning for APAC clients or 11 am when I am working on European deals and close by 10-11 pm in the evening for US clients. To meet these expectations, my organization is very flexible in terms of working hours and where I work from.
Q. What is the most satisfying part of your current role?
A. Most satisfying part of the current role is that I get to learn so much about technological advancements through my work. Over the last few years, I have been working with organizations migrating from legacy Datacenters to Cloud, migrating from Remedy to ServiceNow- has given different avenues on how much there is the scope of automation in this world. I am very fortunate to work as Global Solution Architect where I get to understand technologies but also get to network with multiple people across the globe and understand different cultures.
Further winning deals and adding new logos to our unit, gives a huge sense of satisfaction when your hard work generates business for the organization.
Q. Has your learning at IIFM helped in shaping how you approach your professional roles?
A. IIFM certainly has played a big role in shaping my career. The wide array of courses, the field trips, the internship, and team-building activities—all helped me expand my knowledge about the sector. I still remember the lectures by Prof. CS Rathore, Prof. Madhu Verma, Prof. P.K. Biswas, Prof. Rekha Singhal, Prof Amitabh Pandey, and many more … It was truly inspiring to learn from Professors holding decades of experience sharing on ground real-life experience.
My internship with Winrock under the guidance of Brij Mohan Singh Rathore Sir provided me with first-hand experience of how evaluation studies are undertaken. It was not just the project but the privilege of spending time with such an experienced person who is so grounded. Will always be thankful to IIFM for this opportunity.
Q. What are your favorite memories during your IIFM days?
A. It’s a long list – Hostel life, festival celebrations, classmates and field trips were a complete package of best days in IIFM. Being a person who had spent all her schooling and schooling days at home, hostel life was definitely a big change for me. One should definitely experience this once in learning years.
Q. As an alumna, what’s your advice to freshers or those who are joining IIFM to get the best out of the 2 years there?
A. Some suggestions to make the best out of IIFM :
- Stay focused on what you want to take a long way. Spend time in library reading whichever domain you choose to grow in
- Be part of cultural events
- Invest time in networking, it goes a long way. Has personally helped a lot.
And for the students passing out this year- Try not to limit yourself at the workplace with definitions of the profile, sometime exposure in different areas helps in creating new roads for your career ahead.
Q. And how about weekends, Hobbies, Family, and anything else you want to add.
A. I am Architect in the daytime and an Artist in the evenings ?. Recently during Covid days, I started pursuing my passion to a bigger scale. Held my first and successful exhibition at ITC Sheraton, Delhi. There is no bigger reward in the world when people purchase my art piece and share their smiling pics with my work in the background.
The rest of the time goes with my 8 yr old son, keeping him engaged in multiple things which I couldn’t pursue in my childhood. ?
Q. Any suggestions on who from our alumni you want to get profiled/interviewed here?
A. Manasi Diwan (PFM10), Richa Rajput (PFM11), Pramod Upadhyay (PFM10), and Indranil Roy (PFM10). Will be a pleasure reading their journey so far.