Broadband India Forum (BIF) has appointed Aruna Sundararajan IAS (Retired), former secretary (telecom), Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications and chairperson, Digital Communications Commission (DCC), as the chairperson of the organisation with immediate effect. She will guide the industry body in its mission to improve affordable broadband proliferation and usage access in India.
Sundararajan, in her stint as a bureaucrat, had served as the secretary to the Government of India in the Ministries of Steel, Information Technology and Telecom. She retired as chairperson of DCC in 2019. During her tenure, she played a key role in steering various important technology policies and initiatives across the domains of e-governance, digital payments, telecom and hardware manufacturing, and data protection among others.
As the chairperson of DCC, she was one of the primary forces behind the creation of the National Digital Communications Policy, 2018, and has been keenly involved in giving initial support and encouragement to the unique WANI architecture. She was the chairperson of the 5G High Level Forum and played a key role in formulating the way forward for India to go to 5G.
Post her retirement, Sundararajan serves on the boards of leading companies including Delhivery, Infoedge and Bharat FIH, India’s National Bank of Infra Financing and Development (NabFID), Cochin International Airport and a neo-banking start-up Digi Vriddhi. She is also an active member of various tech mentoring and angel financing initiatives.
