A technology entrepreneur involved with multiple technology start-ups, Huzefa Saifee has over two decades of technical and management experience in building niche global technology products across multiple areas. “Technology can help businesses overcome their strategic challenges and problems,” remarks Saifee. According to him, technological innovations such as hyperautomation infrastructure, cloud-native applications/platforms, composable applications and decision intelligence tools would move the market in the coming years by helping organisations become more scalable and efficient.
As senior vice-president (SVP) and chief technology officer (CTO), digital business services and head, IoT-CoE, Happiest Minds Technologies, Saifee strives to bring relevant technology into the company business and use it to optimise resources to reach the end goal. “I feel my strength is in identifying business and market challenges and creating a holistic blueprint leveraging digital interventions. However, I am still pushing my way through making strategic delegation,” he says.
Prior to Happiest Minds, Saifee was CTO and co-founder of Cupola Technology, which was acquired by Happiest Minds in 2017. In the past, he had co-founded Verismo Networks and led the platform, DSP, and hardware teams to create a world-class OTT, IPTV product.
Challenges excite Saifee. He finds new ideas where there is chaos. “The most challenging assignment has been the most memorable one for me,” he says. This assignment entailed building a video distribution platform for free over-the-top media content, premium content, and personal archived content. “It was challenging because the technology, compute and scale were not available natively by cloud providers those days. Much work had to be done from ground zero, from leveraging open components to building innovative solutions to addressing challenges,” he notes. He believes that technology is there to help businesses solve their strategic problems, and he has incorporated this belief in his work at Happiest Minds. Saifee believes in teamwork, as it brings new ideas from diverse individuals and helps individuals grow.
Saifee has a master’s in electronics and communications from NIT Nagpur and has filed patents in the areas of internet TV remote, multimedia user interface and self-recommendation engines. In his free time, Saifee loves to read about new technologies. But work is not the only thing that excites him. He enjoys playing various sports, but loves cricket the most. He and his wife, who is a homemaker, have two daughters.
