BENGALURU: If you believe in something, chase it. That’ what Suhas Gopinath believes in. The 33-year-old is the CEO and chairman of Globals Inc., an IT multinational that is into development of mobile and cloud-based applications, and cybersecurity products. He became a part of the corporate world at the age of 14, three years after which he became the CEO of the company he set up, thereby getting the moniker of being the ‘world’s youngest CEO’.
Putting his belief into practice, Gopinath recalls running after Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2010. “I saw him heading towards the restroom and realised that an encounter there would be my only chance to meet him. He gave me a piece of advice that I often go back to today as well: The past is a thief, if you allow it, it will steal your present and future,” he says. Other instances include an orchestrated appointment with an IAS officer, by requesting their PA for the officer’s flight number, which he then booked a ticket for as well. “As introverted as I am in my personal life, that’s how ‘shamelessly aggressive’ I am in my professional endeavours,” he admits.
His age has always been a talking point, raising eyebrows even to this day. Remarks about a boy who didn’t even have a moustache but was running his own company was something he often heard. “Even when I was in my mid-20s and would meet policy makers, they would want to meet the CEO. And when I’d tell them it was me, they would ask to meet my father,” he says, adding that the whole start-up ecosystem and the idea of entrepreneurship is changing now. “Entrepreneurship wasn’t considered cool back in the day, unlike the way it is now,” he says.
Gopinath’s interest in the world of technology started as a young boy who would accompany his brother to the cyber cafe. While peers would often be seen playing games and understanding the concept of e-mails, Gopinath wondered why he couldn’t develop “something like Hotmail,” and would wonder why he couldn’t be a contributor instead of a consumer.
So he’d spend time on groups for developers (something along the lines of Yahoo chat groups) where he would discuss the nuances of technology with people from around the world. “One of those times, a person in the US asked if I would join his company and he was quite taken aback that so far, he had been in conversation with someone who was barely in high school,” he recalls, adding that parents of his friends would often advise his parents that their son should concentrate on school work rather than his “hobby club”.
But he firmly felt he had to do what he had to do, and has no regrets for the way his life has panned out. But realising that he missed a part of his growing years – learning an instrument, playing a sport – he has taken to picking up those skills now. “And whenever time permits, I watch cartoons like Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Lion King and Aladdin, all of which I now realise have so many underlying meanings,” he says, adding that the lockdown has taught him cooking and cocktail making as well.