Praveen Upadhyay

An expert with over three decades of experience, Upadhyay has been a part of various prestigious entities in the past, such as HSBC, Accenture, GE Capital, etc; and presently responsible for managing a mammoth cost line of INR 408 million with a space spread over 0.8 million sqft, and a team size of 27 staff for 6000 employees, at Virtusa Consulting Services, Hyderabad. In a bid to give back to his industry,  he also serves as an honorary board member on the board of iNFHRA, an industry body working towards the betterment of the facility management, administration and corporate real estate fraternity.

Elaborating on four of the key strategies implemented by him through his career, he first mentions about the strategies introduced by him for the complete automation and optimisation of the transport system. While working with GECIS, he played a critical role in launching the back-to-back concept for pickup and drop in transport industry in 2001. This very solution resulted in a colossal savings of INR 12 million per annum for the company.

Aligning with the sustainability agenda, required across today’s workspaces, he initiated the installation of 50KW solar plant at Virtusa’s Hyderabad campus – now providing for 2% of the overall energy consumption of the building. He has also explored an option of getting Green Energy (Renewable) for two campuses at Hyderabad, which will eventually cover 80% of overall energy consumption.

Another area that Upadhyay successfully helped streamline at Virtusa was its space management. By undertaking skillfully-delivered retrofit projects, he increased the seating capacity from 96 sqft per seat to 85 sqft per seat and is expected to reach 80 sqft per seat by 2018. Continuing this streak, he was also given the prodigious charge to identify and lead build-out projects to set up new offices at Philippines (150 seater), Malaysia (50 seater), Pune (450 seater), Bengaluru (1200 seater) and Hyderabad (1050 seater) and still expanding constantly.