Our sincere thanks to Mr Praveen Nallapothula for obliging our request and giving this exclusive interview.
# Personal Information briefly to intoduce Mr Praveen to all CTRians
*SoftTown is promoted by Mr. Praveen Nallapothula s/o. Late Sri N. Soundarraja Naidu, a leading labor and industrial law advocate.
*Mr. Praveen is a native of Aragonda Gollapalli which is about 20 Kms from Chittoor. Praveen did his schooling in Chittoor till 12th grade in schools like Chittoor Nursery Convent(1st – 5th Grade), B.Z.High School (6th – 10th Grade) and PCR College (11th and 12th grade).
*Praveen graduated in BE in Computer Science Engineering from Bharath Institute of Science and Technology affiliated to University of Madras in Chennai and went on to complete his Masters in Computer Science from Western Kentucky University – Kentucky, USA.
*Praveen Worked for Motorola ( Cellular Infrastructure Group) for about 9 years and started a company called TeleDNA in 2001 – which deals in providing world class software products for mobile telecom service providers around the world. TeleDNA is based in Bangalore, India and provides employment to about 250 high tech graduates. Praveen was CEO & Managing director for TeleDNA since its inception till May 2011 and was responsible in building the company from zero resources to about 250 resources, raising the required private equity financing and ran it profitably. Under Praveen’s vision TeleDNA has won a prestigious awards by NASSCOM and Ministry of Telecom for being a successful Telecom Product based Indian Company – when most indian companies are service companies.
*Praveen also served as a Board Member in famous Kanipakam Varasidhi Vinayaka Swamy Devasthanam under the guidance of Shri Galla Aruna Kumari – Present Hon Minister for Mines. Praveen is also currently the Chittoor District Chapter Chairman for Young India (YI) which is an affiliated arm for CII.
*Praveen has a lot of passion towards his home town, state and country and wants to be pioneer in making the objectives of SoftTown succeed which are some of challenges that our state and nation is facing today.
*Praveen has always been inspired by his Father Late Shri N. SoundarRaja Naidu a famous and leading labor and industrial lawyer from Chittoor. He always remembers his fathers repeated saying “ No matter what you do and where you stay now, you need to come back and do something good to your parents, home village, town, state and country that has given you the opportunity to become who you are today. Look at Galla Aruna Kumari and Ramchandra Naidu and learn from them….They have left a comfortable life in US and come back ”.
“ My simple goal is to see 2000 families living happily in their own rural villages, breathing green air through direct employment in SoftTown by end of year 2016. And I want these employees not to forget their roots and still help farming to make our nation self sufficient in the food we eat”
#What was the initiative and idea behind Softtown
*Goal of SoftTown is to establish rural IT parks so the rural IT graduates would be able to work in their hometowns only. This will prevent IT workers moving away to nearby cities – thereby leading to economical, social, environmental and agro-industrial imbalance. Every aspect of it will have a huge impact on our nation. Take for example, agro-industrial imbalance. Today most of our villages are empty because most of the farming parents are getting their children a IT degree and once they get a job, they are leaving their village and settling down in nearby cities. And our fore fathers and mothers who become aged can’t do farming. Due to this one day, India as a nation has a risk of not generating its own food grains.
*Countries like Singapore can buy everything because they are a controlled and small country. However, India with a billion population can’t afford to do this. To prevent our nation from this risk, if these IT parks are situated in easily commutable places to villages, I hope that our farmers children will help and work on their existing land during morning and evening hours – by still going to their IT jobs. This IT income can also make them invest in farming. Today just by doing farming, survival has become a issue for farmers due to fluctuations in prices and other environmental issues. My wish is to see younger crowd also in villages when I go to these villages and want them still continue to go for a morning walk to their lands with a neem stick in their mouth – rather than spending a lot of time in Gym’s and walking track parks in cities.
*Like this every aspect I have mentioned above (economical, social, environmental imbalances) will have a huge impact on our nation, if we can establish IT centers in nearby commutable rural areas.
With a brand name of SoftTown, we have started this concept – Software in Towns.
#Why CHITTOOR was selected
*As I am a native of Chittoor, I wanted to start off this concept in Chittoor. I also feel Chittoor is in midst of two big IT cities, just 3 hrs away from both and will have a great advantage of logistics and proximity to world wide customers.
#Tell us about NGIT
*NGIT will undertake outsourcing IT projects from government and private sectors. NGIT also provide last mile corporate training for new IT graduates. These graduates do not have to go to Hyderabad or Chennai or Bangalore spending a lot of money to get this kind of training – which is very much required to make them employable today.
*NGIT has a state of the art facility with all amenities that a City style IT office provides.
#Tell us about Recruitment & Vacancies
*Training and Recruitment process has already started in the Company.
#Does SOFTTOWN lease office space to other firms interested
*Yes, If anyone also have similar goals and ambitions, we can help them with the infrastructure
#Future plans & Expansion
*The goal of NGIT is to employ 100 IT graduates who has Btech-CS, IT and MCA degrees within 1 year from now i.e by end of Dec 2012, 300 by end of Dec 2013 and about 2000 by end of 2016.
*The current infra structure can accommodate 300 people. Infrastructure expansion will happen from Jan 2013, so we can accommodate more people by then.
#How Do you feel for being pioneer in bringing such huge thing as IT to chittoor
*My parents, my well wishers, my native town, my nation and god has given me the skills I have today. I want to utilize those skills to help people and our nation in need. IT is my skill and Chittoor is my native town..hence IT in Chittoor.
#Thank you sir. Wishing you all success and Glory in your present and future endeavours.
**Thankyou venkatesh. I want to appreciate you for spending some time bringing Chittoor into limelite and make it visible to world wide audience. Great job and it is great that you are also spending some time for the sake of Chittoor and our nation
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