How Transparent Leadership Brings a Human Touch to Technology

When Vasanth Mosoor accompanied a friend to a meeting in Jaipur, he wasn’t expecting to become Managing Director of an IT company’s operations in India. It was just supposed to be a break in routine for Vasanth, but it changed up more than his schedule—it changed his life.

“Vinay aspired to set up a state-of-the-art Global Delivery Center in India,” Vasanth says, about this first meeting with CommerceCX’s CEO. “The firm was registered in India by then, but he was not confident to take things forward. When I expressed the idea and intent to scale it up, he was happy for a discussion.”

In January 2020, this idea was just that—an idea. But then the rest of 2020 happened and the idea started to become less of an idea and more of a way to help expand CommerceCX’s resources to support the U.S. team while building a presence in India and ensuring cost effectiveness for customers in a time when the pandemic was forcing cost-cutting measures in every industry.

It was a gamble and the first months were uncertain. Vasanth credits the success of the company to the passion of its people.

“The India markets are tough, on the competition and attrition front,” Vasanth says. “To get adapted in the system, in Salesforce, was tough. But the right intent and a fantastic team paid off.”

But how do you keep to the right intent? How do you build a fantastic team? As Vasanth has learned through his time leading CommerceCX’s India office, it’s all about transparency, honesty, and warmth.

“Transparency is not just a dollar earned and a dollar spent,” says Vasanth about his experience trying to ensure transparency in his role as Managing Director. “It is a culture of accountability. Making us responsible is a great way of building transparency at every level and has helped me a great deal.”

Part of this transparency is admitting what he doesn’t know. Vasanth came into his position with decades of experience in IT hardware and manufacturing, but software was a new game and Salesforce was even newer. For Vasanth, it was important to understand his gaps in knowledge—and as it turns out, according to Forbes, that’s one of the biggest factors in true leadership transparency.

“Any interest in IT services and software came from the role and from the CCX culture,” Vasanth said. In his time at CommerceCX, he has taken up certification courses in Salesforce Administration and pursued greater understanding of his new business.

One of his greatest prides is his work overseeing the development of India’s branch of CommerceCX Academy, which was created to help new people with limited experience learn about the Salesforce ecosystem and put their work to use on client projects. Vasanth makes sure to highlight the work of IT trainer Sridevi Lakkam.

“Sridevi’s contributions are enormous,” he says. “We have trained and onboarded 25 interns and the Academy has achieved close to 50 Salesforce certifications so far. All the credit goes to this hardworking professional.”

But some of the credit goes to Vasanth, who worked with people like Sridevi and CCX Academy Director Rick Williams to make CCX Academy a major priority in growing the India team. Now, Hyderabad’s India Office boasts a state-of-the-art training facility, which Vasanth says is one of CommerceCX’s biggest strengths in breaking into a difficult India market.

The other biggest strength, he says, is the strength of the organization in general.

“It’s important to show our strengths as an organization,” he says. “We’re being recognized for our hard-working professional teams.”

India is a tough market to break into for IT services. There’s a good amount of competition in the digital transformation and IT services sectors and companies have to stand out to make an impression. Vasanth says CommerceCX’s culture is a major factor in how successful the company has been in India, pointing to the hard work ethic of his teams and their attention to detail. He also never mentions one of CommerceCX’s strengths without pointing to someone who embodies that mentality.

“Harshini has worked hard engaging clients and providing constant support,” he says, about CCX Operations Manager and Project Manager Harshini Yerragudi, “She’s helped a great deal.”

Cultivating a mentality of positivity and teamwork posed a challenge in November 2020, when remote work became a necessity in India and across the world. The U.S. team had already become accustomed to the work style, but establishing a visible, transparent company culture is harder to do in a remote environment. Poorly executed remote work environments show cracks in communication, leadership, and team structures more visibly than in-person teams.

For Vasanth, sealing these cracks means showing up consistently for his team, no matter where they are.

“As soon as you start the day, you see a ping from Vasanth or Harshini, saying ‘good morning,’” says Aashka Shah, one of CCX’s technical architects. Aashka is one of CCX’s fully remote employees and says that this outreach from Vasanth at the beginning of the day has greatly contributed to her feeling a part of the CommerceCX community. “You feel positive, you want to take on new challenges, you want to work.”

It’s more than just a greeting, though. The real intention is to build a relationship proactively, for Vasanth to show that he’s there if his people need help and that he’s confident in their abilities. Reaching out this way lets Vasanth set aside his role for a moment and connect with his people in a human level.

Vasanth has been through a lot with CommerceCX and seen the India office grow beyond what he and Vinay originally discussed back in January 2020. And, like the best leaders do, he credits this growth not simply to the technical expertise of the people he works with, but also the culture CommerceCX has cultivated. As he talks about his time at CommerceCX, he overflows with praise, naming countless team members—Harshini Yerragudi, Shailesh Toomu, Deepa Mosur, Manohar Reddy Patel, and more—who have changed the trajectory of CommerceCX.

“I can define success with an intentional team spirit,” he says. “This growth is due to my technical and administrative team, who have believed in CommerceCX and its ability to prosper in the right direction.”

This article is part of our series Stories of CommerceCX, which seeks to collect and record employee experiences into a series of articles exploring their history and growth and how CommerceCX’s investment in goodwill and employees’ quality-of-life leads to positive business results. Read more Stories of CCX here.