After having served the Indian Army for about 19 years, Jayant Kumar made a rare transition to the corporate world, joining Smart Chip Limited.  His rich telecom en­g­ineering background eased the transition and led to a fulfilling association of over 11 years with the industry. At Smart Chip, he played an instr­um­e­ntal role in setting up operations for the telecom infrastructure arm of the company, Vihaan Infrasystems India Limited.

Kumar currently works with Tower Vision India as national operations head. His responsibilities include managing network uptime and service level agreement compliance, controlling and billing of power and fuel expenses for clients, customer and vendor management, and formulating and implementing oper­ational policies to ensure efficient maintenance of GSM sites across the 20 circles in which the company operates.

In the past, Kumar has worked with Indus Towers as operations head of the Uttar Pradesh (East) circle and as deputy general manager, operations. In the former role, he was responsible for managing the network infrastructure while the latter role involved the development of Indus mobile-based enterprise application.

Kumar believes that the role of infrastructure service providers in the telecom industry is evolving with the advent of active infrastructure sharing. “Optimising for 100 per cent airtime generation with 100 per cent airtime consumption will be the guiding philosophy for networks as we move forward,” he says. Kumar also foresees a growing focus on green energy.

Kumar is an eternal optimist with a never-say-die attitude. Kumar believes in delegation of work and in facilitating the execution of decisions taken. “I am averse to micro management as it leads to the creation of a claustrophobic environment for the team and cramps their creativity,” he says. He also likes to periodically review the progress of projects, as this enables him to initiate mid-course correction and thereby ensure optimal resource utilisation.

Kumar has a B.Tech. in telecom engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a postgraduate diploma in telecom engineering and management from the Military College of Telecom­­mu­nication Engineering.

In his spare time, Kumar likes to pursue his interests in information security, cyber forensics, and vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. He has recently completed a certificate course in ethical hacking from the International Council of E-Com­merce Consultants.