Impact Creator. Risk Taker. Innovator.
In the era of social media, if someone asked us to describe Maneesh Sharma with just three traits, we’d pick the ones above.
Maneesh has joined us from GitHub, where he was India’s General Manager. All the phenomenal growth and operations that GitHub India has had over the past few years were under Maneesh’s leadership.
Before joining GitHub, Maneesh held leadership positions at leading technology companies, including Adobe and SAP. He was also the JAVA Ambassador at Sun Microsystems, where he drove developer engagement across APAC. He’s also been the founder of an online library and a hyperactive startup investor and evangelist.
While Maneesh is obviously an IT industry veteran with over 22 years of experience, for us, at LambdaTest, he is more than that. He has been our mentor and guide since our early days. In fact, Maneesh was one of the earliest investors in LambdaTest — underscoring his belief in the team and the vision. We feel honored to welcome him on board as our Chief Operating Officer.
We sat down with him to understand his journey and what makes him so good at what he does.
Where it all began…
It all started in the early 2000s, right after the dot com crash, Maneesh came back from the US to India. He had two offers in hand — become a mobile developer in a young company or join as a tester at Sun Microsystems.
While Maneesh was deciding on where to go, the hiring manager at Sun told him to join the company and “figure out what wasn’t working with the Netscape Web suite of products. The idea really excited Maneesh even though he had little clue about what testing really was as he had so far been an assembly level and protocol programmer.
To use the cliche, the rest is history. Breaking software and making it right for the end customer became a life-long obsession.
What really drives him…
Changing people’s lives.
Maneesh truly believes that in the modern digital era, getting the software right actually makes a difference in people’s lives. It really isn’t an overstatement.
“I’m not talking about it from a commercial perspective. It is about creating a positive impact,” said Maneesh. “People don’t remember the awesome stuff about software, people remember stuff that doesn’t work. Imagine your interface on a Tesla car not working, or the vaccine you just took not being registered in the portal as proof, or the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars not taking off due to a bug. Testing software to make sure it works the way it is supposed to really is at the center of creating an impact..making a difference..changing lives.”
For Maneesh, building a company is really about caring deep enough to do something that can truly create an impact. At GitHub, it was about working closely with students to help them get into software development and helping with internships. Similarly, at LambdaTest, he wants to push initiatives like the certifications program to help the community at large. “With LambdaTest certifications, content, and learning assets — we can help developers and testers across the world enhance their learning and career development.”
When asked if there’s one memory that stands out in terms of creating an impact, Maneesh feels that building GitHub India has been life-changing.
“No, it’s not only one moment, I think the whole GitHub journey has been just fantastic. India is a land of developers. It’s the fastest-growing developer market in the world. Making India the second largest market for GitHub has been just phenomenal. I will put my experience at GitHub right at the top of making an impact on the ecosystem,” he said.
Wearing many hats..
“No wonder I feel that Bookmeabook was probably granted as a boon to me by the Gods above.”
The above is a comment from a subscriber of BookMeABook, India’s first online book library, on mouthshut.com, a review site. Maneesh founded BookMeABook way back in 2005 to help people keep their passion for reading alive.
“I believe there’s a sense of satisfaction in creating something,” said Maneesh.
BookMeABook helped bibliophiles get access to an online library as it had become increasingly tough to find books that were tailored to unique tastes. It also was a boon to people who had lost access to a steady flow of books to read. From grandparents to children, it catered to all age groups and helped them rediscover their love for reading. BookMeABook also donated books to schools and the needy which gave the community a sense of satisfaction.
To put it shortly, Maneesh has been a founder, a team player, a manager, a leader, and also, “…been a tester, I’ve been a developer, been a pre-sales person, a marketer, a salesperson and obviously been an end-user of various products and services. So that gives a view of each persona, what they go through.”
He is also active in the startup ecosystem as an investor, advisor, and above all, a sounding board for entrepreneurs. Currently, he is a part of the Training Advisory Board of the All India Management Association (AIMA), NASSCOM 10000 Startups Warehouse Steering Committee, and is also a mentor in the NASSCOM DeepTech club.
Maneesh believes that this melange of experience will help him in taking LambdaTest to the next level.
Plans for LambdaTest…
For Maneesh, the mission consists of two distinct parts — product innovation and reaching out to all stakeholders.
“The awesome products that we have, we have to take it to every tester and developer out there. HyperExecute will help with unprecedented scale. Test-at-Scale (TAS) will help with shift-left testing. The future is always going to be about innovating on new products,” said Maneesh. “It is important to bring the focus back on testing and why it is important and hence getting the right message out is crucial.” HyperExecute is a next-gen smart test orchestration platform to help businesses run end-to-end automation tests at the fastest speed possible, and Test-at-Scale (TAS) is a test intelligence platform.
Maneesh delves into the mission a bit more by adding that the times have changed for developers and testers. In the past, when all companies followed the waterfall model of software development, they used to get a piece of code to test or a product to test after three to four months. But now, they have to test almost every day.
“So how can you speed that up? That’s where LambdaTest comes in. Another important aspect is insights — What’s really going on, what’s working, what’s not working. Our intelligence layer will add a lot of value,” he added.
The overall goal for Maneesh is to build a platform that is starkly different and better than legacy cloud platforms so that the modern world can test seamlessly on it.
We can’t wait to get started on this journey with you, Maneesh! Welcome aboard!
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