Star Contributor of the Month – Chetan Bekkinkeri
For the month of March 2012 and in honor of National Volunteer Week, we’re recognizing Chetan Bekkinkeri who has been leading product management and requirements gathering for our community over the past several months. For the past couple years Chetan has been part of the SunGard team contributing to Mifos in various ways; when we asked him to step into the role as product management lead for the community he did so with great energy. Keep contributing so we can shine the spotlight on you!
Chetan has taken on his role in the community with great pride and commitment – he is always available to meet with a user and listen to their needs. Chetan is using his skills as a business analyst and his strong knowledge of the microfinance domain to serve as our critical bridge between users and developers. His ability to take complex and varied user needs and translate these into clear, concise, and consistant functional specifications for development is unmatched. Chetan is always ready to hear your product feedback and reminds you to review the specs he’s been generating.
Read on for more about Chetan!
Chetan Bekkinkeri – Bangalore, India
Brief Bio (in the words of Chetan): Chetan Bekkinkeri works as a business analyst with the Microfinance team at SunGard Global Technology, India. He has been actively involved with the Mifos product development and support over the last 18 months by supporting key Mifos customers in India. Additionally ,Chetan has been leading the SunGard team efforts on the Data Migration Tool and other contributions to the Mifos product. Prior to joining to SunGard’s MF team, Chetan worked with a venture capital funded product development organization focusing his efforts on building a Microfinance and rural banking product platform for the India markets.
Relevant Skills: Microfinance/Banking Domain expertise, MySql
Chetan’s Impact:
Discovering Mifos: I started working with Mifos as part of a community service program at SunGard Global Technology. SunGard was a strategic partner to Grameen Foundation for Mifos development and deployment. As part of the partnership agreement, SunGard had deployed 5 full time developers/testers/analysts towards the development of the Mifos product. I was a part of the 5 member team and was coordinating the various activities for Mifos as a SunGard program lead. I have continued to work on Mifos post the transition outside of Grameen Foundation as a SunGard Volunteer.
Contributions Made to Date: Data Migration Toolkit, Mifos deployments at Adhikar/Grameen Koota, Roadmap development for 2012, Functional Specs for Late Payment Fees, Transfer from Savings, and more.
Current Projects: Functional Specs for Term Deposits, Collateralized Loans, etc – general product management and user discovery.
Impact on the Poor: I hope that through Mifos, we can technologically enable at least 20 MFIs with a social mission
What’s Rewarding about Working on Mifos:
“The fact that a global team working on a noble cause collaborating seamlessly overcoming the timezone, language and cultural barriers.”
Fun Facts about Chetan
Favorite Food: Other the staple Indian food (Rice, roti, Dal etc), I like Mexican food, (love the burritos at Chipotle)
Favorite Open Source Project: Mifos is my first open source project contribution
If Chetan Could Travel to One Place in the World: Peru – Machu Picchu
You can find out more about Chetan on LinkedIn.
