CEO Insights Magazine

The emergence of the digital economy has long made access control a fundamental component of security compliance. This often induces challenges with respect to identity management, especially when it comes to external identities such as customers and partners who are essentially external organs of an organization. In shut eye time, you wind up with challenges pertaining to sharing and collaborating files securely. This is precisely where NirvaShare (a startup initiative by Nirvato Software Pvt Ltd) strategically places itself as a seamless solutions provider dealing with access, security and compliance, and in turn helps organizations share cloud storage files with external users. Bengaluru based NirvaShare is swiftly creating its own niche in the enterprise file sharing segment, largely owing to more than two decades of core IT experience of its founder, Nandakumar Natarajan. A programmer by passion and a leader by his strong wisdom, Nandakumar is re-establishing trust among the business stakeholders. He engages in an exclusive interview with CEO Insights.

What inspired you to venture into software architecture and what drives you today as an entrepreneur?
I have been working in the software industry for more than 20 years mostly with product companies. I started my professional journey as a Java programmer in the late 90s. But my passion for coding can be traced back to my college days, when I started with assembly language programming. The love for coding and passion for solving challenging problems are what inspired me to venture into software architecture. As an entrepreneur, one gets direct access to showcase an idea as a solution to customer problems. Under standing market dynamics, technology, finance, team building, leadership, etc will be a unique learning one gets to experience only with entrepreneurship.

What is the unique proposition that your organization offers to the clients?
NirvaShare is a startup product from Nirvato Software Pvt Ltd. It solves

the pain points pertaining to secure file sharing between enterprises. At times, when external identities such as customers, partners, etc who are not part of your organization identity store do bring up a challenge while sharing and collaborating files securely. This is where NirvaShare can help with access security and compliance while sharing files from cloud object storage such as AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google cloud storage, Digital Ocean Spaces and more.

Today customer experience has become the predominant aspect of any successful technology solution. How do you perceive the evolution of market demands over the past decade?
Traditional methods around huge documentation and providing lengthy user training to customers have drastically changed with present times. User experience and design thinking have become the modern mantra for every product design. We can solve a problem using technologies, but when presenting the solution to users, the color, UI flow, the button placement, and more, become key aspects of user experience. This is because technology is not limited to a certain section of people as perceived in the past, but has reached a wider range of users right from infants to old people. Hence in addition to using proper technologies, user experience has become an important aspect to consider in order to enhance DIY, make less of a learning curve and adopt human behavioral patterns with the use of AI.

Going forward, what are the changes in market behavior that you anticipate?
Building a quality product and taking the brand to target consumers with thrust have always been a challenge. Presently, most cloud platforms have their own marketplace to enable such kinds of collaborations between software vendors and customers, but this has to still evolve for customers to engage validate, and thrust the product on global platforms across verticals. Customers are also savvy on software security,cost reliability and brand values which adds more responsibility on software makers.

In your professional journey so far, which are the milestones that bestowed you with utmost satis

faction both as an individual and as a Chief Architect?
For any technical person, the most satisfying moment will be when his/her solution is built with quality, goes production live, and runs hassle free. I always feel great satisfaction when my piece of code or solution is used by customers and they are happy.

In your professional journey so far, which are the milestones that bestowed you with utmost satisfaction ­ both as an individual and as a Chief Architect?
For any technical person, the most satisfying moment will be when his/her solution is built with quality, goes production live, and runs hassle free. I always feel great satisfaction when my piece of code or solution is used by customers and they are happy.

In the light of your strong experience in the software business what advice would you give to the budding tech architects of the country?
Being in the technical ladder is always a rewarding journey due to continuous involvement in solving technical problems. Irrespective of age and experience, one has to keep learning new technologies and build passion to write code. There is a myth that architects don't have to code after attaining seniority, but that is not true. One has to give importance to the ground level of technical complexities, which help to make better architecture and design decisions. In the industry there has always been a high demand for techno logy professionals.

Nandakumar Natarajan, Founder & Chief Tech Architect, Nirvashare
Nandakumar is a software technology professional with over 20+ years' work experience and immense passion for technology. A hardcore programmer, he has spent most of his career in design, architecture and development of enterprise products. His area of interest includes product innovations, technology, and entrepreneurship. Domain expertise are on J2EE, Identity & Access management, Information Security, Cloud Computing, Ethical Hacking and IOT. He is currently working on his startup product called NirvaShare, a file collaboration software for cloud object storage like AWS S3, Azure Blob and many others. His past experience includes being a part of the core team of the product companies like Microfocus, VeriSign, Oracle, and Motorola among others.

Hobbies: Carnatic Flute and Yoga.
Favorite Cuisine: Punjabi and Chinese.
Favorite Book: Mostly technical books.
Favorite Travel Destination: Hill Stations.