Rakesh Singh?s business card reads top executive officer (TEO). ?That?s a HR accorded title?I am in fact, the managing director. True, my title attracts attention whenever I meet someone for the first time,? he says, settling down for our dinner meeting. Rakesh looks fit as a fiddle, and is in fact a marathon runner. No, not the kind of marathon runner who participates for the heck of it and drops off into an air-conditioned car after two miles. He finished those races, and in good time.

He joined Citrix, a leader in the application delivery infrastructure space, in August 2005 through the acquisition of NetScaler, where he was the general manager, Asia operations. ITC Gardenia is this spanking new hotel in Bangalore, and as we look around the Indian cricketers arrive for the second Test. ?Not just them, we in the corporate world need fitness as well.?

Rakesh takes his running very seriously. ?You know, having good stamina helps in the corporate world when the going gets a bit stressful.? He holds a Master?s degree in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley?s Haas School of Business, a Master?s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a Bachelor?s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (BHU).

?I am from Jammu & Kashmir. In the late 1980s, it was becoming clear that I had to come out of the state due to the political situation there. But I did not lose my ambition. I had topped the electrical engineering course in my university and was looking out for bigger things. That was the time I decided to move to the United States.?

Out of college, he joined Sun Microsystems in 1990. He stayed on in the US for a decade and then decided to head back to India. ?My wife who initially had a problem moving to the US, now did not want to get back. She was apprehensive about India at that stage. I convinced my wife that the we will be there only for a few years and moved back to India. And now she does not want to move out of the country.?

Today he is a proud man. ?India has really come of age. Our (Citrix) development centre in Bangalore contributes to the development of various product lines. Our aim at the R&D centre will be to expand the development of multiple product groups. We will also be strengthening the R&D team here by appointing technical relationship managers who will work closely with our customers and assist them technically in case of upgrades or any technological configuration required on Citrix products that they might have implemented.?

The company is expecting that as the IT infrastructure of organisations in India is experiencing a huge level of consolidation, the role of application virtualisation technology would be a key enabler for growth. Additionally, Citrix is expecting that a lot of companies in India are moving towards Web application servers where Citrix finds the role of its Web Acceleration products making significant headway.

The company is also bullish over the fact that SAP has certified that Citrix?s virtualisation product enhances the performance of its ERP application and this fact will help the company boost sales of its virtualisation products in the Indian market.

Citrix Systems expects significant revenues to come from application acceleration and application virtualisation solutions. By leveraging the 24-hour development cycle and vast skill sets available in India, Citrix is able to continue to develop its complete set of application delivery solutions and support its partners worldwide around the clock.

Citrix employees do not have to necessarily work from office. ?We have tried to make sure that the employees do not get caught up in traffic. We would like them to be efficient and productive. Hence we encourage most of them to work from home, after having given them all the required facilities.?

Is he planning to get back to the US? ?I am not sure. One can never say never in your career. But it?s great to be in India now,? he signs off.