From Scissors to Salesforce- Rupesh Bhatia’s Story
“Fortune favors the Bold!” This is a mantra which I have followed and lived in its true essence all these years. I am here today to spell out my journey to Salesforce.
Coming from a financially distressed area, in a lower-middle class family, it is expected, especially in my part of the world, to follow your father’s footsteps and do what your forefathers have been doing all these years. My father is a self-made barber, who migrated during his childhood days to the city of dreams -Mumbai. Although it was a distant dream for many in our community to get proper schooling in those days, my father’s hard work and dedication prevailed as he got me enrolled into an English medium school — ran by Christian missionaries from Ireland. This itself was dream come true!
After scoring decently on school board exams, I received lots of suggestions as to what career options I should pursue. Most suggested I pursue commerce or arts. I am very thankful for one of my mentors who advised me to listen to everyone, but do what my heart tells me. My heart and my mind told me Science was the way forward.
Because I scored well in 12th grade, I was quite confident I could pursue Engineering. The decision I faced at that point was to either run my father’s barbershop or take a shot and become the first IT engineer from my small community. I was already learning barber skills from my father when I received the good news that I earned a merit seat at Mumbai University. Even though it was a 5-hour daily commute to pursue my Bachelor’s degree, I was happy to pursue my dream.
I landed my first job within 3 days of my final engineering exam. It was bit on non-technical side dealing with XML pages, but went ahead with it to support my family financially. Just 1 month into the corporate world, while everything was going well, I felt some unrest in my mind since I was not in a technical role. I had a conversation with the manager, and soon left the job. I moved on to the world of .Net programming, but was still feeling like I was just part of the crowd. I felt I needed to do something different to have that push in my career.
That’s when took one of the biggest risks of my life and signed a bonded labor contract to learn PeopleSoft ERP with one of the leading Indian IT firms! I had no idea what I was heading in to, but the idea I had was to challenge myself and learn something new. Regrettably, I was not excited about my new assignment. I found myself having a candid conversation with the CRM Head about my experiences and thoughts. Remember when I said my mantra is ‘Fortune favors the bold?” I am so happy I had that conversation, because the CRM head introduced me to Salesforce! Yes, this was the first time I ever heard of the platform, and gladly accepted the challenge to research and build a team. And so, my Salesforce journey began!
Having accepted this challenge, tons of questions ran through my mind: How does one learn Salesforce? How will we get Salesforce projects? Will management support me in getting certified? Will my certification help the practice get projects?
While I studied patiently through Force.com Fundamentals documentation and training podcasts (26 videos) over a period of 3–4 months, there were doubts raised by my colleagues on my madness. Imagine yourself in a PeopleSoft business unit of an IT services firm and you are trying to learn something where there is no support, no team, no projects and you have bonded yourself for next 2 years (I didn’t have enough financially to break that bonded labor.)
I had only one answer to all of this…
For a change, I like this product and platform, so I will work hard towards mastering it and leave the rest up to destiny and god.
I proceeded to work hard on POC’s and small projects. Fortune had to be on my side, as soon I had a chance to train, mentor and lead a 15 member Siebel team on Salesforce. This was the first and THE BEST project of my decade long career, where I worked with the best client, best implementation partners in Salesforce — later acquired by Salesforce.com and learned all the nuances of Architecting, designing and implementing Salesforce for a global client in flat six months.
I have never looked back since then, having always believed in myself against all odds. I have worked with multiple super-talented people in this community and learned a lot!
Key things which I would like to pass on:
- Never give up, believe in yourself. There is an opportunity waiting for you.
- Give it back to the community. Keep Learning, Keep Sharing!!
- Customer’s success is your success.
For young professionals:
- Focus on Basic Concepts — Security Model, Data management, User management, Object Oriented Programming, Integration Patterns etc.
- Relate what you’ve learned and implemented on how it will impact your end customer’s business. You will feel good that you are making an impact on this world.
- Do not typecast yourself just an admin/developer. Aim for a being a consultant who can fit into either of the roles.
For Experienced professionals:
- You’ve been great all these years in your previous technology but that doesn’t guarantee any success in this community.
- Start learning Salesforce from scratch as a fresher/beginner. Go back to your old learning days and you’ll find learning Salesforce that much fun.
My dream job is to one day work at Salesforce. But for now, I am focusing on giving back to my community. I have traveled the world, but my roots are still from Rajasthan — North India. They are still generations behind in their thought process. While my parents worked hard to give me opportunities, I reflect upon my community and I see one of the major issues is lack of education. I strongly feel that education is the way ahead if they want to keep up with the world. For me educating girls, not just boys, should be top priority to address this issue. I have started an initiative around education back in my home town in Rajasthan which will promote education among young talents kids who cannot go further due to lack of funds and among young girls who are not allowed to pursue their educational dreams.
I am still a beginner in this Salesforce community but Marc Benioff’s leadership qualities and business ethics have inspired me a lot. Everyone within this Salesforce community has inspired me in some way or other. To name a few — Shivanath Devinarayanan, David K Liu, Salesforce Ben, Gerrard Sinnema, Zachary Kampel, Seema Powar and yes of course — Zachary Jeans.
You can follow Rupesh on Twitter at Rupesh Bhatia.
