Sid Pai
Managing Director
Sid is a US citizen who has lived and worked in the US, Europe, and Asia for over three decades. He spent 15 years working in the United States and Europe before moving to Asia/India in 2002. During his career, Sid has advised and completed over $20 billion in transaction value, with deep experience in technology services and M&A transactions. He has led some of the largest and most innovative technology sourcing transactions ever completed, many of which are still considered watershed events in the evolution of the industry. Sid has an extensive network across global service providers in India, Europe, and the US.
Sid writes a regular column for the Mint newspaper, the Wall Street Journal's India joint venture. The column appears in print as well as on www.livemint.com. He also writes a regular column for Financial Express, a business daily which appears both in print and online. Both columns are pro-bono and appear every week, alternating between the two newspapers. Sid is also the author of “Techproof Me” published by Penguin in 2022. The book was written after Penguin's direct invitation and request. Until the latter half of 2015, Sid was Partner & President of ISG Inc's Asia Pacific Region, Member of the Executive Board, and Chief Strategy Officer. ISG is the world's largest sourcing advisor, having completed over $500 billion in sourcing contracts. Sid was directly involved in over US$20 billion in transactions, while teams reporting to him had completed over US$80 billion. He built the India operations from scratch, starting from his living room.
Prior to ISG, Sid held senior executive roles with IBM and KPMG Consulting/BearingPoint in the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe. As the executive in charge of IBM's Communications Sector consulting businesses in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), he held overall responsibility for a 29-nation region. As a senior Partner and member of the Strategy Council with KPMG Consulting (USA), Sid started up and grew several businesses from scratch, including the Managed Services business in North America and the firm's operations in India.
Sid is also the Managing Partner of Siana Capital Management LLP, a VC firm that invests in Indian deep tech and deep science startups, many of which also have a large US presence and/or are incorporated in the US. He holds both an MBA in Finance and an MS in Applied Economics from the University of Rochester, as well as a Bachelor of Commerce from Bangalore University, where he was selected for a National Merit Scholarship and voted in as President of the Students' Union. Sid is an active martial arts practitioner and holds and trains as a 4th Dan Black Belt in Okinawan Shorin Ryu karate.
Paul Schmidt
Partner
Paul is an IT industry veteran. He is a global executive with a demonstrated history of driving business growth, client satisfaction, and operational efficiency. He is a strong, results-oriented professional skilled in business development, strategic client management, operational excellence, digital and IT strategy, digital technology transformation, shared services, and professional services. At Kyndryl, he was a trusted advisor to grow key strategic, enterprise-wide customer relationships. Paul was responsible for superior client experience, revenue growth and profitability. Before Kyndryl, he was a partner at ISG for 17 years, where he was a Partner for digital strategy and transformation.
Vahid Hussain
Head of Operations
Vahid has over 12 years of experience in the industry, during which he has handled IT delivery, BPO operations, recruitment, client coordination, project management, and training coordination for various clients across the globe. As a manager, Vahid has consistently delivered all project deliverables on a timely basis while maintaining a collaborative approach with clients.
Vahid's other areas of expertise include business operations, personnel management, administration, space management, vendor management, cost management, and system administration support.
He has worked with a variety of clients, including central and state government bodies, private companies, multinational companies, NGOs, and start-ups. Vahid has regularly managed cross-functional teams of over 100 team members comprising of operations, recruitment, admin, logistical, technology, and support functions.
Vahid's major functional areas are operations and building teams from scratch for handling non-voice process BPO and information technology operations for US-based clients, particularly from Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (Intelligent Document Processing) and E-Commerce Industries.
He has also handled large-scale recruitment for closing bulk hires (over 500 at a time) for top MNCs in India and the Middle East. These were largely for entry and mid-level positions for the setup and/or repatriation of "captive" global service centers, including positions in IT, ITeS-BPO, retail, and banking/financial services.
Vahid likes to try different challenging roles to learn new things and prove that nothing is impossible. He believes that love and passion for his work and his teams produce hard work and self-confident teams, from which results will automatically appear.
Vahid holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computers from Bangalore University.