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Kasenna makes it easy for broadband service providers to deliver multi-play offerings to consumers. With Kasenna IPTV technology, broadband service providers are able to create new business models, brand their rich media delivery, generate increased revenue and reduce subscriber churn. Kasenna is a privately held corporation. International venture capital firms Alloy Ventures, Artiman Ventures, CIR Ventures, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Entertainment Media Ventures, Entrepreneurs Fund, Key Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners, as well other investors such as Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems, have provided funding.

The company has a successful track record of more than ten years in digital video content management and delivery - five years as part of SGI's Broadband Media division and five years as a private company.

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Kasenna also has an engineering center in Bangalore, India.

Kasenna's market and customers are players in the telecommunications industry. Kasenna's IPTV technology is not universally adopted; in fact India is one of the countries ready to adopt it. Hence India as a market is of strategic importance to Kasenna.

Kasenna required a Managing Director (Sales) - India. Kasenna's executive sourcing requirement was therefore not for the traditional technology-management senior executive, but for a sales person with deep understanding of and contacts in the Indian telco market as well as in the Indian Systems Integrators space. This person would need to have the ability to sell into senior management (CXO equivalent) of large companies, as well as maintain a good working relationship internally within Kasenna; therefore experience in working with and in US startups was also necessary.

This search was completed within 3 months.

 
 
Anu Parthasarathy

We have undertaken several such assignments in the past for clients like Autodesk, SAP, Informix, etc, and hence were confident of tapping into our network of seasoned business professionals in India and Asia Pacific for this position.

However this assignment was challenging because the revenues from India would eventually be a large and significant part of Kasenna's revenues given that IPTV was catching up faster in Asia and India, and therefore it was imperative that we got a mature executive with solid sales experience in the region. Also, Kasenna is a startup, and the IPTV technology nascent, therefore selling this position to candidates was going to be a challenge.

 
 

Patrick Burns, President and COO, Kasenna

We were referred to Anu and Global Executive Talent by one of our investors, and initially there was skepticism over investing in a specialized search firm instead of just picking up the phone and talking to a few of our contacts in India, but once we met with Anu and understood the nature of her company's services, the team was convinced that we needed just such a specialized agency to get the right fit for this position.

When I first met with Anu the thing that impressed me the most about her was her client list - she provided some good references and that inspired confidence.

Also, I believe Anu understood the context of the position very well - the need to have the right technology vertical context, the need for a self-motivated and driven individual who could create a market for our company from scratch, and the need for this person to be familiar with the US startup culture.

We recognized the challenges of finding the right candidate for this role. Our potential customers in India are large companies like Reliance, BSNL etc. whereas Kasenna is small. Therefore we needed a person who could build partnership with SIs like Wipro, HP, Sun in India. Also, the person had to be a good program manager besides being a sales person because new technologies typically go through a pilot phase and then are rolled out - he needed to manage that process in a fairly hands-on manner.

GET followed sound processes through the search. For instance, they did a great job of qualifying candidates - there were detailed and insightful write-ups on candidate strengths and weaknesses, and even minor details like administrative management of arranging for interviews in Mumbai were taken care of very efficiently.

Also, the process was very quick - we had our first set of short-listed candidates being interviewed in two weeks from the start of the engagement.

Notably, when we interviewed candidates, we were impressed with each one of them - all were good candidates and we needed to just pick the most suitable among them.

Post our decision on a candidate, Anu was closely involved in taking the recruitment to closure, including negotiating the compensation package and taking care of other administrative issues at that point.

In all, we have been extremely satisfied with the experience of working with Global Executive Talent, and given the need would be keen to engage with them again for our senior executive needs.

Mark Gray, Chairman and CEO, Kasenna

We are very happy with the person we found for our India office, and don't think we could have found just this profile through any other means. GET's specialized services do add value.

Satish Menon, CTO, Kasenna

Things have worked out great, and we have Anu to thank for finding us just the right person for this position.

 
 
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