At the end of 2019, LexisNexis South Africa announced the appointment of their new Managing Director, Videsha Proothveerajh and the retirement of Billy Last. Tech4Law caught up with Videsha and got to know her a little better and also asked her what was in store for LexisNexis in 2020.
Tech4Law: Let us start at the very beginning. Your life journey from junior school, high school, home town and then on.
Videsha: Oh, let’s see, my home town is Phoenix which is an Indian community in Kwa Zulu Natal, so I’m a Sharks girl. I went to school in the community, then completed a BComm at the then University of Durban-Westville (UDW) before moving to Johannesburg. I was very ambitious growing up. I was bright and I was blessed in that I had parents who were very keen on me fulfilling my potential and told me to put in the hard work required if I wanted to achieve my dreams. They told me that the only limitations I had were those in my mind and that I could have, do or be anything I wanted.
As an undergraduate working at Electronic Data Solutions, I learnt very early on about customer service, customer satisfaction and solution selling, and what that means in business. I was there for over five years and was the youngest Client Delivery Executive in the history of the company before being headhunted by Microsoft, which at that time was transforming from a product company into a services orientated company. I had a few very successful roles there and grew my skillsets to include an in-depth knowledge of products and software and the ecosystem play. When I left Microsoft I was the partner development manager in Small and Mid-Market Solutions & Partners (SMS&P). I love the concept of partnering for success and find it vitally important to always find spaces where we can cooperate, collaborate and even work with competition because I think in today’s world the needs from a customer perspective are so vast that no company can claim to have all the solutions required end to end. Partnering provides a vehicle to complement your offering with like-minded companies that share your vision. We have to figure out how we can all at the end of the day create value for the customers.
I graduated with an MBA specialising in Advanced Strategic Management whilst at Microsoft. I received a distinction for my dissertation which was titled “A Blueprint for Partnering”. I also got married and gave birth to my first child, my beautiful baby girl Adithi, whilst at Microsoft.
I made the decision to start my own company as this was something I always wanted to explore. I also wanted to focus on motherhood and my very demanding senior management role was not necessarily allowing for this. My consulting company focused on business strategy, strategic value selling, ITIL and partnering for success. It was a huge growth curve and I learnt all about entrepreneurship, the realities of being a small business owner, how to use my networks optimally, the joys and pains of building something from scratch and seeing it manifest into a successful endeavour, the risks and bets you have to hedge and much, much more. I loved it and I built a very successful business in a short space of time. I also gave birth to my adorable son, Aryan, and spent quality time with my children.
After some time, I was approached by the country manager of Intel who was looking for key skills to grow their business. To be honest, I loved owning my own business but I missed the corporate world and having ‘big brother’ in the background should something go wrong. It was exciting to join Intel and develop an understanding of their services, products, hardware and software. One not well- known fact is that Intel has the fifth largest number of software developers in the world. I was learning this whole continuum that went from something as reasonably simple as a microchip to Fabric and High-performance computing and everything in between and I had a fabulous career. I love learning new things and this was a playground that was infinite in terms of the learning possible.
I quickly moved into the MD role at Intel and after a year or so became the GM for South and Sub- Saharan Africa. When I started at Intel it was only an office in Johannesburg. By the time I moved out of Intel South Africa we had launched into Africa and opened offices in Nigeria, Kenya and French speaking Africa. I had a great team who dreamed big and wanted to make the promise of Africa a reality and we wanted to serve the African market to enable them to take their rightful place on the global stage. I’m a firm believer in proper succession planning, coaching, mentoring and helping people achieve their potential. Having people who can step up when you leave and who can take the business to the next level of greatness is a sign of good leadership. The strength of your bench is paramount to you being able to move onto your next adventure.
I started working with Intel EMEA and was the multi-vertical sales director and ran sales for North-Western Europe and META. It was another massive learning curve with new cultures across EMEA, ways of doing work and larger financial and people responsibility. I then was promoted to Strategic Growth Director which was a very cool responsibility. I was involved with a lot of exciting and emerging tech – I had to formulate the EMEA strategy for emerging tech including components such as AI, Blockchain, Drones and 5G was a big focus for us as well. My role evolved into using emerging tech as an enabler to the Data Centre business. I became the EMEA Territory Director for Intel’s Data Centre Group which is their growth business and focuses across the vast array of products and services such as processors, chipsets and products designed for the enterprise, cloud, communications infrastructure, and technical computing segments. Being the region lead means building relevance, preference, really disruptive models and proof of concepts that you can go to market with whilst leading matrix and direct teams, doing stakeholder management on an insane scale and ensuring sustainability all the time while ensuring we made the numbers.
I was blessed to work for a company that had a platform that I could harness to empower women as this was and is something I am very passionate about. I did a lot work in terms of digital literacy for women and the girl child around two really big programmes. The last of which was around a research paper called Women on the Web, that we commissioned, looking at the digital gender divide in Africa. The results showed that in Africa the divide was as high as 47%. So 47% less women are online than men, which is unacceptable, especially if you want a society where everybody gets access to equal opportunities. So, we thought, let’s look at how we use technology to break down those barriers or leapfrog it. We launched a goal to train and digitally enable over five million women in Africa in partnership with like-minded partners such as World Pulse, World Bank, Facebook and many more by 2020. We delightfully achieved the goal in 2019 and the work is still on-going.
My decision to leave Intel was because I wanted to grow outside my comfort zone. It is an amazing company and I had over a decade of amazing learning and I got to work with wildly intelligent and curious people which fed my soul in many ways, but I was in a comfort zone and it was time for change. I had an amazing team and it was time for me to leave and allow someone else the opportunity to step into those shoes properly and do things their way and take the business to new levels of success.
Then, LexisNexis came to have a chat with me and here I am!
Tech4Law: Here you are. Not so many days in.
Videsha: It’s been a fun ride thus far. I went to the Paris and the UK offices for 2 weeks and then got back to South Africa and got stuck in. Paris and the UK were great because I got to immerse myself in this culture, learn a lot and build some networks before I hit the ground running. Normally you would only get to meet those people after a year or so of working with them, so it was a great kick-start. It was really valuable to build the rapport, see the culture in action, understand what is going on at all levels of the business and see a lot of the leading edge tech that is incorporated into the solutions. I’m a techie at heart and I was very impressed with what I saw, it was positively surprising. I was totally surprised by the depth and width of the business and the amount of local empowerment and enablement that is present.
The legal industry is new to me in terms of bringing to market solutions and services that are niche to the vertical, however I’ve always serviced the legal industry, in my many roles, in some form or the other. I’ve always had the large and medium sized law firms as customers. In terms of legal tech it’s a different foray and I’m all about learning so I’m very excited about it. It seems a natural marriage where tech and legal come together to positively impact how professional work is done.
I am very people orientated, I love working with people to help them unearth their potential and as an extension the potential of the companies they work in. I really believe that if you can create an environment where people thrive, then the successful business follows.
LexisNexis is very interesting because it’s not your normal global business. The level of local entrepreneurship that is encouraged, the local ideation and the ensuing product development that happens on the ground is atypical of most global businesses where the local entities are generally just sales and marketing arms of the parent company.
At LexisNexis South Africa we have 4 business units that seek to produce local solutions and services for varied customer segments that range from Risk and Compliance to Academia to Intelligence and Workflow solutions to providing accurate and authorative practical guidance, regulatory compliance alerts, research and case law, legislation, precedents, commentary etc etc etc.
I’ve met with our board and was excited by the amazing skill sets, experience, knowledge and levels of passion I encountered. I look forward to working with them to ensure stakeholder value beyond just our Profit & Loss. I’ve visited customers because that’s where the rubber meets the road. I get such a zing from visiting customers. That’s how you get the real feedback and sentiment on our company, abilities, products and services, service orientation, customer orientation, etc. It’s always valuable to get the unedited information from the source and use that to improve how we add value to and service our customers.
Something I have learnt in this short space of time is that we have an amazing team of people. The passion, the energy, the will to serve our customers and add value, the IP that exists in this organisation, it’s like the best kept secret ever. Couple that with the IP we have from the software and product development perspective and it makes you realise that we have no limit in terms of potential. I’m very impressed with the level of technology and curiosity that exists, not only in terms of how we roll out solutions but also in terms of our technical vision, platforms, technologies such as RPA, AI etc, product lifecycle, agile methodology and the technical depth of our teams . It really is state-of-the-art and future-looking – and certainly more advanced than most global companies I have worked with.
I found all these pockets of gold, you know, within the organisation. The people here at LexisNexis are so invested and they’re so passionate about what they do. I am so excited to work with all of them and serve our customers excellently.
Tech4Law: What do you do in your spare time when you’re bored and have nothing to do and you want to relax?
Videsha: I meditate every day, it’s the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, it’s about connection and for sanity and then I do yoga. I love food and I find many opportunities to savour good food and spend quality time with my people. I’m into all the esoteric stuff like energy healing. I am a Reiki master but I don’t practice often enough. I’m a readaholic. Often, I don’t sleep because I’m too engrossed in a book. I also love to walk. If I have the time, I will disappear for hours on a Saturday morning. My family know the routine, so when they wake up and I’m not there they know I’ve gone walking. People say I’m an extrovert but I’m not really, I like my own company and I like quiet me time, but every so often I love going out and socialising and having a big party and eating too much and having fun. I do love hanging out with people who are close to me and those who feed my soul. My kids are my happy place, they make my heart smile so I spend as much time as possible with them. My daughter Adithi, is 15 and my son Aryan, is 13 and as they grow older and have their own social lives, quality time together and being present matters!
Tech4Law: Okay, next question. Who is the business person you most admire?
Videsha: Oh, that’s an interesting question. It changes as my needs change. It’s changed as I’ve grown into myself and as I have worked through different career challenges.
Fred Harden was an instrumental person in my life from a career perspective. He was the GM at EDS South Africa when I joined as a grad. They had a really cool, in-depth international grad programme and they rotated you to all the business units to ensure you were well-rounded. After a year he saw some potential and he kind of took me under his wing. I learnt almost everything I know about business from him. He was a hard task master and I spilt many a tear recovering from business reviews with him, but those were invaluable lessons that helped mould my success in many areas. He sponsored me in the organisation. He didn’t just provide me with the opportunity to learn and master varied skillsets focused on business, finance and people. He also gave me opportunities to sink or swim – my failure or success was up to me.
When I worked at Microsoft I loved Steve Ballmer’s charisma (CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014). I learned so much about customers and customer appreciation and how you delight customers from him, so that was great.
Jack Ma, Oprah, Bill Gates, Diane Bryant, Indira Nooyi, Sheryl Sandberg, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet all come to mind for different reasons. There are also many local business leaders that I hang out with from time to time and glean pearls of wisdom from. I look up to different people for different reasons. I don’t think there’s anybody who’s a ‘one stop shop’ for me
Tech4Law: Okay, so Billy has retired as MD. What’s his role in 2020 in LexisNexis in the future?
Videsha: Billy’s will be consulting as a strategic advisor in 2020. He has thirty-one years of knowledge and know-how in the business, the majority of those as MD. He cares about and is passionate about this business and we’ve already built a good relationship.
Tech4Law: He’s a special man, Billy. Are you still focused on the legal sector?
Videsha: We will always be a legal tech company so the legal industry will always be close to our hearts and our solutions will first cater to that market because it’s in our DNA. But we do serve many other sectors as well. Take Risk and Compliance, it’s not isolated to one sector anymore, it’s on every CxO agenda and we have much value to add to all our customers. We offer a data service, but it is more than just data, it’s about data that’s now intelligent and aids decision making as a result. We’re helping our customers make intuitive choices that are data driven. On the work flow side of things it’s all about automation, and how we drive efficiencies through those processes. So yes, we will always stay close to the legal sector, but we will serve a much wider audience moving forward.
Tech4Law: Okay so what is in store for LexisNexis in 2020? What is your focus?
Videsha: We’re in the process of crafting a shared vision to move forward which should be ready in the coming month or so, it is a process that has started, where we all as a team, purposefully engage and share our ideas and formulate a future that has adding value to our customers at the heart of it, that advances the rule of law and ensures we all have much fun getting there. Out of that will flow our Strategic Imperatives for 2020 and the medium term.
From a people perspective the journey is around helping all our people to really achieve their potential. Career development is a focus area to ensure we are providing the tools, processes and opportunities to foster competence in people as the foundation of company value.
Tech4Law: And what is your vision for South African business in 2020?
Videsha: As you know it’s a very challenging time for South Africa from an economic perspective, but I have been in business long enough to know that this is cyclical in nature. A culture of growth has to be combined with a mindset of value at the heart of all we do internally and externally. My vision for 2020 is about unprecedented growth for LexisNexis, our customers and our people. From a South African perspective, we need to grow our economy beyond the forecasts in order to provide more employment, more opportunity for small, medium and woman owned business and attract the right kinds of FDI. As large business we must focus on how we give back, provide opportunities and pull others up as we grow. So, the vision has to be growth – all around.
Tech4Law: What strategies and processes are you going to bring to the LexisNexis table?
Videsha: I think one of the things that I’m hoping to explore is the disruptive power of technology to leapfrog challenges and move us all forward exponentially. I am all about customer excellence and this will be front and centre. Our brand narrative will be a focus area as we harness the portfolio and the value we bring to customers across the business areas.
Tech4Law: Is there a new exciting product coming up next year?
Videsha: There are a few that we have in the pipeline…but we want to surprise and delight our customers. So, watch this space…2020 is going to be quite a great year for LexisNexis, our people, our customers and the industry at large.
Tech4Law: Good, I think that wraps it up. Thank you very much for your time and we wish you everything of the best at the helm.
