A people's person to the core, Sanjeev Keskar believes that commitment is the key to success in every sphere of life. Professionally, hard work and sincerity have been responsible for all of his achievements.

The beginning was made in 1985 when Keskar, who had a passion for marketing and selling, joined Saj Froude as a trainee in the engine testing division. While in the company, he began to pursue a part-time Bachelor degree in Electronics. Having done his engineering in electronics and telecommunication from Pune University, Keskar pursued his Masters in Management Science from the varsity and was, in due course, promoted to the rank of Assistant Manager at Saj Froude.

In spite of the promotion, Keskar longed for a break in marketing, because he believed that his aptitude lay there. "I love being with people. I like communicating and developing new contacts. I therefore feel that marketing has and will always be my forte," he said.

The coveted break finally came in 1990 when Keskar was appointed as Area Manager, Pune at CDIL. In a tenure that spanned almost three years, Keskar was instrumental in increasing CDIL's business in the region from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore.

Sanjeev KeskarCountry,  Sales Manager, Freescale Semiconductors

Education Bachelor in electronics and Masters in Management, Pune University First job Saj Froude, 1985 Best-known qualities Hard work, passion for his team and family support Immediate goal Make Freescale the preferred partner of choice for all designs in India's embedded space Fond of Watching Bollywood movies and spending time with his sons Favorite adage Only when we stretch ourselves a little beyond the limit, will we be able to over achieve

Seeking exciting opportunities
Having done his bit for CDIL, Keskar started looking out for more exciting opportunities and in 1993 he got an offer to work at Max India as Area Manager for Pune. Under his tenure, the company, which had revenues of less than $0.5 million and just one credible account, grew into a company worth more than
$2 million in revenue and also clinched seven key accounts. Keskar's efforts in ensuring this dramatic growth were rewarded when he was promoted as Regional Manager for the western region at Max India.

His passion for building organizations or the zest for challenges set him on the move very soon and in 1996 he joined National Semiconductors as Manager of Distribution. He was promoted as Country Manager two years later. Most of the people in the industry today know Keskar from his stint at National Semiconductors.

When the company acquired Cyrix in 1998, its share in the Indian market stood at two percent. But within a year's time Keskar roped in major OEMs, including Compaq and Wipro, to garner 14 percent for Cyrix. "Cyrix for me is one big success story. Developing contacts with the OEMs was my biggest challenge and having come out with flying colors makes me feel good," Keskar reminisces about his Cyrix days.

Facing challenges
National Semiconductors included, Keskar was instrumental in remodeling the future of three organizations in less than a decade and was popular as the 'turnaround man' within the realms of the IT industry. It was early in 2001 when Keskar's reputation for embedded technology won him an offer from AMD, then a fledgling in the chip space in India.

As Country Manager for AMD, Keskar's faced an uphill task of having to sell a 'push' product against huge competition from Intel. "That was the time when AMD was virtually unheard of in India. When I joined the company, we were a mere three-member team who worked out of Delhi," he recalls.

AMD then had no OEM partner; not a single government tender had the brand's specifications. The challenge before Keskar was to build the brand in India. His strategy was to drive the business through the channel and work closely with the OEMs, government bodies and the corporate in order to create awareness about the company.

This strategy paid off. After four years of Keskar's efforts, AMD has today grown into a 50-member strong team in India and has operations across 17 cities in the country. "It was no easy task, but I can certainly say those were among the best four years of my professional life," Keskar said of his AMD days.

"We used to work nearly 15-16 hours a day and traveled extensively, almost 20 days in a month. Extensive travel, and a good amount of hard work finally got us to sign on the likes of Wipro and Vintron, who are now offering AMD-based machines," he added.

Moving on
From Wipro and Vintron to HCL, Acer, Zenith and a whole lot more, AMD today boasts of at least eight to 10 OEMs who seed their machines with the AMD chip. Having convinced the OEMs, the next big challenge for Keskar was to build the channel network. A number of personal meetings and many travels later, Tech Pacific was signed up as the distributor for AMD in 2002.

That was a turning point for AMD, post which, the company got to sign up with the likes of Rashi, Priya, Cyberstar, Neoteric and Abacus as master resellers to further strengthen its channel network.

"In addition to extensive interactions with the channel partners, we also worked a great deal on marketing and advertising of the AMD brand especially around the 64-bit. This helped us grow from strength to strength in a relatively short period of time," said Keskar.

Hard work, passion, a great team and family support were very crucial in overcoming the challenges of building brand AMD, indicated Keskar while insisting that if one has the will power, one can achieve anything he sets out to do.

As AMD's footprint in India grew larger, the industry around was also witnessing many changes. One such change was Motorola separating its semiconductor division, thus leading to the birth of Freescale Semiconductor in 2004.

Sanjeev Keskar's earlier experience with embedded technology and his natural urge to take on new things, led him to Freescale, which he joined as Country Sales Manager in 2005. The task ahead of Keskar now, is to make the most of the opportunity in India and garner a commendable customer mind share for his company.

"Freescale is among the top three players in the semiconductor space in the US. Our vision is to replicate that success in India and make Freescale the preferred partner of choice for all designs in the embedded space in India," he said while explaining the challenge that lies ahead of him.

"The differentiator that we have as a company is a competent team of technical people–field application engineers. We believe that the customer's success is our success. The current focus for my team would be to grow the top line greater than the market," he added.

India being a key market for manufacturers like Freescale from the design point of view and with companies like Cisco and Juniper making huge investments in R&D, Keskar believes that his company has the opportunity to garner a credible number of global clients in a short period of time.

What others think about him
Of the many who have known Keskar from his National Semiconductor days is Raj Rathi, MD, Cyberstar Infocom, Bangalore. Describing Keskar as very earnest, Rathi said, "For the last eight to nine years that I have known him, what strikes me most is that Keskar is a man of strong commitment. He brings along with him a whole lot of reliability and dependability. He is a very down to earth, approachable person and that makes him very endearing to distributors as well as other channel partners."

Reminiscing over his association with Keskar, Arvind Chandrashekar, Business Development Manager, AMD India, said, "When we joined AMD, it was in total disarray. Anything that we did got us no response. Those were the times when Keskar was very supportive. He would tell us not to worry about what people have to say. Being in the sales and technical support team, I was among those frequently battered by the resellers. He reassured me very often at those times and helped me cope up."

In fact, he says that dealing with people became easy for him because Keskar always accompanied him and spoke to customers. "His ability to reach out was so good that even resellers in small towns knew him by person. I guess that is his key strength. He is a careful listener and gives everyone a patient hearing. His approach is always towards problem solving. However big or small the issue is Keskar has solutions. The experience of working with him was really wonderful," he recalls.

The family man
A marketing whiz kid apart, the soft-spoken Keskar is a family man. His two sons, aged 12 and 15, keep him occupied over the weekends. He loves to travel with his family and enjoys watching Bollywood blockbusters with them. Keskar is not an avid reader, although he reads business magazines and newspapers to be in the know of the latest in the
field. An extremely health conscious vegetarian, Keskar finds yoga and meditation a big stress reliever.

Giving advice for today's youngsters and he said, "Like in our younger days, today's youngsters are an aggressive lot, but probably they have less patience. In order to grow well and make it big, one must remember that aggressiveness apart, there is need to have a great passion for work. Only when we stretch ourselves a little beyond the limit, we will be able to over achieve."

Personally he feels that at least in the early stages of building a career, people should think about the company first and give the task on hand first priority. Only then will they be able to make the most of what life offers later on.

Subbalakshmi BM

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