Techie turned manager, Banda invests in people

In 1985, when Vijay Banda was 12, he hurt his left hand while fixing his father’s bike at his home in Vijayawada. This did not deter him from fiddling with bikes again. He was fascinated with bikes and cars. “I never learned driving from anyone but the day I got my first car, I knew how to drive it,” Banda, who is now 47 and who is currently director of cyber security at Qualcomm, says.
Banda studied in a Telugu medium government school and was the first engineer in his family. His love for machines made him choose mechanical engineering for his Bachelor’s. But he had to shift gears for his Masters in the US as the automobile industry was battling a slowdown. While his passion for automobiles continues, Banda is today driven equally by the changing technology landscape and the cause of upskilling youth.
He earned a Masters in computer sciences, with distributed databases as a specialisation, and started his career as a software developer with Ford Motor in 1995. Three years later, he joined Oracle as a technical support manager and rose to become the director of Oracle Cloud Services. Banda says one of the most challenging assignments during his stint with Oracle was to make all systems Y2K ready.
In 2004, he transitioned from being a techie to managing and leading technology teams. “When one moves to a managerial role, one should be able to invest in people and their success. You cannot hesitate to hire people smarter than you because only if they succeed, you succeed,” he says.
From Oracle, Banda moved to Deloitte, where his role included building, delivering and managing IT shared security services.
Today, when he is not at work at Qualcomm, he spends time mentoring underprivileged youth at NGOs and government colleges – on leadership, communication and employability skills.