Hard work and perseverance are the keys to breaking all barriers

"Hard work and perseverance are the keys to breaking all barriers." – Anuradha Gupta

With 28 years of experience, Anuradha Gupta has led Strategic Planning, management, research, design, and development of Technology Products, Solutions and Operations. She has incubated and led start-ups.

 Anuradha is an inspiration for women in tech. With a career spanning over twenty-eight years, her experience ranges from Software development to Product Management, from team building to formulating Business Strategies to heading SBU.

On being asked about highlights of her career she shared, “Within a month of joining the Command & Control Project for Naval Platforms in Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), three experienced members of the project resigned. It was extremely challenging, but I managed to pull it off. This was at the start of my career in the real-time embedded applications development in a Comet Management System – an indigenous system, designed and developed in India with no reference system. It was an interesting journey full of experiences of failures and successes, frustration and joy from a Software Developer to a Project Manager with successful delivery and sea trials. The feeling of witnessing the system being used successfully was exhilarating.”    

She was the first woman from BEL to sail for system commissioning, for which Navy had to take special permission. At BEL, she was the first to receive an Individual Contributor R&D award, from a team of 12000 R&D engineers. She designed and developed a Low-cost solar-powered GSM system for rural deployment Vihaan Network Ltd, which has over 5000 deployments now. Another achievement was to set up the HTS vertical, build a team to design the sensors-seismic, MEMS-based, Microwave, Laser & Electrooptics along with integrating applications like AI-based VMS & C4I for Border Security, Critical Infrastructure security, etc.

When asked about the challenges she faced as a woman in the industry, she says, “At times, my empathy and kindness were taken as unprofessional. Often, I had to make an effort to get myself heard.  It was challenging to balance my professional and family commitments, but I have been blessed to have a supporting family.      

Anuradha has fearlessly chased her dreams and chosen an unconventional and challenging path for herself. She has similar advice for women in tech. She says, "Hard work and perseverance are the keys to break all barriers. It's very easy to get disheartened and slow down but don’t forget that every day is a learning experience. It is crucial to focus on your career. Learn to say no. Also, remember you are the most important person in your life.”