Positioning SmartTrak to power your future: CEO, Bhagwan Ganappa

For those who work in the IT industry, the power of software is known to many, but the challenges of it, to only a few. Braving these challenges and emerging out as a winner is SmartTrak, a Solar Energy company that is headquartered in Hyderabad, India.

Napolean Hill had once said that, “All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea”. And when Bhagwan Gnanappa dreamt of developing innovative cost-effective, energy-efficient solar solutions for industry and domestic purposes, he pursued his passion for clean and green energy and founded SmartTrak. The mission that he had set out on has been successfully accomplished as the ISO 9001:2008 certified company has made its presence felt across a gamut of verticals including embedded cloud-based monitoring & control system, software algorithm development, electronic hardware and mechanical system design, today.

Post this, Ganappa served as Senior Software Engineer at Nvidia, where he was a part of implementation of Audio and post processing algorithms for Multimedia and mobile phone applications, handling daya to day tasks such as Algorithms implementation, integration and testing and Optimization.

Ganappa has cleverly shaped the roadmap of the company and has been gradually expanding its presence in India, where SmartTrak predominantly operates in A.P, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Gujarat and Delhi, today. The company also renders services through an office in the US.

As the CEO of the company, his achievements are manifold, ranging from deploying the first of its kind solar power back-up at petrol pumps to rooftop sun tracking solar plant and solar tracking systems.

With a combined knowledge and hands-on-experience of fifteen plus years in various verticals, Ganappa has been heading SmartTrak for the last four and a half years and has worked with international customers and vendors, while maintaining international standards in product development, he has not only driven the product installations with utmost commitment and passion, but has also led and managed several talented teams in building various products from scratch.

As one of the pioneers behind the strong foundation of this leading manufacturing company that independently deals and designs with innovative solar tracking solutions, the CEO’s vision and experience has motivated the SmartTrak team to constantly be on their toes and work towards the bright future and growth of the company. In fact it is under his valuable guidance that the company today has excellent expertise in design, engineering, monitoring and control that has made them exemplary in the world of renewable source of energy, addressing climate change issue globally.

With a set of plans for the days ahead, Ganappa is all set to create a solar revolution in the upcoming days, going by what Peter Drucker says, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

In conversation with the Entrepreneur

• Tell us something about yourself?
  I am a passionate entrepreneur who believes in the power of technology and loves to do Signal Processing Algorithms, Remote Monitoring and Control. I co-founded SmartTrak in January,2011, because I felt there was a need to develop a Complete Eco System for Solar Tracking Solutions in India.
• Why exactly was SmartTrak set up?
  SmartTrak was founded to meet the need for robust, reliable and cost effective installation and operation of solar roof top plants, solar trackers including developing software algorithms and hardware to enable the low cost design, installation and operation of solar PV plants. The company was established with primary focus in developing quality solutions through innovative technologies, with a team of world class professionals who provide industry leading customer services.
• What did team SmartTrak aspire to become through the years?
  We aspired to evolve as a company with high ethical and moral standards. And I am proud to say that with our core domain expertise in working on Solar Technologies, Software Algorithms development, Embedded Control Systems, Electronics Hardware and Mechanical System Design, we have come a long way from being a small team of few to a large team of experienced and talented decision makers.

The Entrepreneur- Then and Now
Having completed his Post Graduation in Signal Processing from International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad and Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Electronics from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Ganappa began his career as a DSP Engineer Trainee at Signion Systems Pvt Ltd., where he developed Test methodology for R-S Codes, helped to prepare TOT Package (for SDL) and reviewed software for R-S Codes in TIC54x Assembly Language.

He then served at Suvistas Software Pvt. Ltd. as a DSP Engineer, where he worked towards Math and DSP Functional library development on ZSP 400 DSP processor. His tasks in this company included Fixed point implementation of all basic math and DSP routines, Logic optimization to extract the features of ZSP architecture, Assembly language implementation, Optimization and Testing.

After his stint at Suvistas Software Pvt. Ltd., Ganappa became the DSP Engineer at Analog Devices and was a part of implementing VOIP solution on ADSP – 218x and Blackfin DSP platform and a MP3 network audio decoder on ADSP – 218x. At this company he mastered the arts of Fixed point implementation of Speech Codec G.711 and G.726, Assembly and memory optimization, Integration to the firmware solution, Conformance testing, Integrating MP3 decoder library into Network Media platform, Developing a framework on DSP side to decode network MP3 encoded packets and test suite for framework verification.

Post this, he joined Portal Player as a Senior Engineer and was part of a low-power MPEG-4 enhanced AACPlus and AAC decoder development effort on an ARM core + hardware acceleration platform (Vector Co Processor). His roles at this company included the development of Hardware accelerator architecture based on signal processing algorithms of audio decoder, Evaluating hardware architecture, (FPGA to silicon), Modify the audio decoder software with respect to the hardware accelerator design and test suite for hardware module verification, while his responsibilities included decoder compliance testing and overall error handling architecture for decoder.

Prior to co-founding SmartTrak, he held the position of Senior Software Engineer at Nvidia, where he was a part of implementation of Audio and post processing algorithms for Multimedia and mobile phone applications and tackled issues such as Algorithms implementation, Integration and Testing and Optimization.