Sujai Karampuri, Director, ITE&C Department, Government of Telangana
Sujai Karampuri is director, electronics and semiconductor in the information technology, electronics and communications (ITE&C) department, Telangana government. He has over 20 years of experience in the wireless and telecom industry. He was earlier CEO of Sloka Telecom, a wireless and telecom company he founded, which delivers Wi-Max and Wi-Fi products and end-to-end solutions. He has also worked as a system architect with Sasken Communications, and with Alcatel in the US and Europe.
In his current role, Karampuri is responsible for promoting the electronics and semiconductor industry. He also heads the T-Fiber project, which envisages taking fibre connectivity to every home in the state. “Future growth of the sector will hinge on promoting vibrant electronics manufacturing. For this, collaboration among various government departments is essential,” he says. Laying fibre is also a challenge because of the involvement of multiple agencies, and time and money constraints. He says that it is critical for operators to balance investments in spectrum acquisition with infrastructure roll-out. Moreover, as mobile connectivity spreads, a Wi-Fi backbone will play a key role. “Over the next five years, broadband proliferation is set to increase and it will make more business sense for operators to invest in broadband,” says Karampuri. In fact, he is very proud of Telangana’s idea of delivering broadband to every home just the way water is delivered, and his own role in overseeing this.
Karampuri has deep insights on management. In putting together a team, he tends to choose the person who has the intent to work on the project rather than someone who has a background in that field. “I am fairly hands-off, but you need to get into the details at some point. I give my team all the freedom and power, but also make sure they keep me informed,” he says.
Karampuri is a graduate in electronics and communications from the Regional Engineering College, Warangal, and has a master’s in electrical engineering from Michigan Tech, USA. He is an avid reader and spends two hours every day reading on topics ranging from history, science and genetics to economics, leadership and management. He also likes writing, sketching, sculpting, computer animation and photography. He enjoys spending his spare time with his two young daughters, his wife, who is a software engineer, and his parents. “One of my New Year resolutions is to spend more time with my kids because I have learnt that there is nothing worth forsaking your family time for,” he says.
