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The virtue of discipline

Yugal Sharma, Country Manager, Polycom India reveals to Chirasrota Jena that the quality of discipline he has imbibed from his defence background has attributed to his success.

Yugal Sharma, Country Manager, Polycom India, is the man behind the establishment of the brand name of the organisation in the country. He has taken the lead role in increasing the market share of the company. One would assume that heading the Indian operations, along with other SAARC countries, is a tough task at such a young age, but Sharma says, “If you will take risks then only you can achieve some amount of success in life. Starting from the recruitment of my team members to planning out the marketing and sales strategy were the biggest challenges for me. Joining Polycom has been the greatest turning point of my life.”

Coming from a defence background Sharma has spent his early days across the country. After completing his BSc from Sagar University in Madhya Pradesh, he did his MBA from Punjab University. He started his career by working with a joint venture company of Tata Telecom and Lucent in 1993. After gaining five years of experience, Sharma resumed his studies at the IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade) in 1998, to pursue his studies in international marketing. In 2002, he joined Siemens as a Senior Manager to handle their sales and marketing team. He was handling their channel operations and joined the Chennai office to set up the distribution model and successfully launched their distribution network.

In 2001, Sharma joined LG Electronics as a Product Head to handle their to be launched cell phone division. Later he shifted to Parsec Technology as General Manager, Sales and Marketing, to handle their call centre solutions. He has an impressive career record of initiating change management in Parsec Technology by moving to a business model company from a typical product development organisation.

Discussing about his professional life, Sharma says, “In 2003 I got three good opportunities from Motorola, Bharati and Polycom simultaneously. It was really a confusing state for me at that time to choose the company. At last I decided to join Polycom despite protests from my family and friends. I thought that though the pressure and assignment would be more here at Polycom, but I would get ample opportunities for taking independent decisions.” As the country head of the company he has spearheaded the operations of the organisation. Under his guidance, Polycom India has undertaken impressive measures to introduce video conferencing in the Indian judicial system wherein a prisoner need not have to travel from the prison to the courtroom.

The biggest achievement in his life is the growth which Polycom has achieved in India. The disciplined background of Sharma has helped him to make the company as well as every employee internally more disciplined, which ultimately helped Polycom to became a known brand in the video conferencing area.

Sharma loves to play and watch cricket matches. Disclosing his success mantra, he says, “I have always gone for assignments well ahead of at least five years of time, which is based on the balance between the heart and head. Planning the annual growth strategy of Polycom is just like planning a one-day cricket match. In a cricket match you need the cooperation of all team members and the same also happens with the business strategy and employees of an organisation. The strategy, which I have always prepared well ahead of time, has helped me immensely for my personal growth as well as for corporate development. ”

His passions are golf and travelling. His favourite destinations include Paris and the temples of India. He has two children and to unwind, Sharma loves to spend time with them.