Adithya Sailesh, India
Adithya Sailesh is a Business Engineer at the growing healthtech startup Lenus eHealth. Coming from Chennai, India, Adithya moved from a city with more people than the entire population in Denmark. Even though he is still adjusting to the size of this Nordic country and a slightly different temperature, Adithya enjoys the Danish diverse environment and Copenhagen’s sizzling startup community.
Denmark has huge thriving entrepreneurial startup scene
“One of the pros of living in Denmark is the fact that there is this huge thriving startup scene where people are very tech savvy and have tons of entrepreneurial ideas. In general, people are very open to experimenting with technology and they are willing to invest. I saw that pretty clearly when I pitched my current role to Lenus. They didn’t have this position before, yet, they were open to experiment with it and to give it a shot.”
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There is a need for business functions to have a technical translator
“After working as a software engineer and specialising in automation and machine learning, I had a good understanding of the tech landscape. However, I often found that there was this gap between technology and the upper management. Managers made decisions like they knew nothing about the underlying technology. There was a need to understand where these managers were coming from. This made me want an introduction to the business side to understand how they perceive things and what their incentives are. In the end, it drove me to take an MBA in Denmark.”
“When I attended the MBA programme, it was the first time I wasn't walking into a room full of engineers. In India engineering is a very homogeneous crowd and everybody is very similar to me. Denmark, for as small as it is, is extremely diverse, so the people in my class came from many different countries and had very different backgrounds. Some people worked in the public sector, diplomats, scientists and legal councils. It was an excellent opportunity for me to get the best of both worlds where I could blend my technical expertise with organisational theory. Today I see this blend in my role as a business engineer where I am kind of a technical translator that bridges the communication gap between the tech teams and the various business functions.”
The flat hierarchy allows you to be involved in the decision making which helps you grow tremendously
“The whole dynamic at work is very different from what I’m used to. Here, I get a lot of autonomy and I’m part of the decision-making in every single process, which has been very empowering. Of course, this structure also means that more people are involved in every decision and you have to keep everyone in the loop all the time. “
“The level of autonomy is not something that I've experienced before. You are blessed with a lot of responsibilities instead of “just” being an engineer who is coding all the time. I think it’s interesting because it also helps me think more strategically rather than just developing or operationalising things. Personally, this open structure is something that pushes me even further and keeps me motivated every day.”
Explore: HealthTech in Denmark.
