Guharajan Sivakumar
Co-Founder and CTO, Aprecomm
As co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) at Aprecomm, Guharajan Sivakumar oversees novel business opportunities and devising the technological roadmap to address the company’s future needs. He also manages employee operations and resources in pursuit of strategic objectives.
Sivakumar started his career with RTLinux, a variant of Linux that primarily provided solutions for time-sensitive applications utilised by research and defence organisations in India. Following a few years of networking experience at Qualcomm-Atheros, he founded a telepresence start-up. “All of this experience contributed to the establishment of Aprecomm. We are a significant player
in the Indian market, with our solution monitoring over 50 million end-user devices and ensuring delivery to over 5 million homes,” he notes.
Sivakumar sees himself as a technologist and believes in creating value over problems. According to him, telcos are currently transitioning from being mere connectivity providers to experience providers. “Telcos must ensure that their customers have a positive gaming and streaming experience. Furthermore, as they transition to next-generation technologies such as 5G and 6G, which offer faster speeds and greater bandwidths, telcos must ensure the smooth delivery of virtual reality and augmented reality applications. This necessitates a backend system capable of continuously tuning the system and measuring experience to ensure minimal latency in service delivery, which will become a mandatory need, moving forward,” he adds.
Sivakumar thinks that the industry’s slow adoption of new technologies is a key obstacle. The evaluation procedure for telcos is complex for a variety of reasons, particularly the stringent requirements imposed by governing bodies.
Speaking about his most memorable assignment, he says, “When, as a company, we decided to pivot experience delivery to the home segment from the small and medium business and enterprise segments during the pandemic, we faced the greatest challenge.”
As a manager, he strives to operate within a flat organisational structure that encourages all team members to freely express their ideas and perspectives.
Sivakumar has a BE in computer science from Coimbatore Institute of Technology. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family, which comprises his wife, who is an accountant/advocate; their two daughters and his parents. He also enjoys going on long drives, watching movies, playing video games, participating in sports, and reading biographies and philosophy.
