Prashanth Kaithamana currently serves as senior director, sales & marketing, at Anritsu India Private Limited. His role includes maintaining and ramping up the testing and measurement (T&M) business from the different market segments that Anritsu caters to, while formulating and implementing strategic plans and go-to-market strategies, driving growth and collaborating with customers to ensure that Anritsu is a market leader in the T&M domain.
During his professional career, spanning over 21 years, Prashanth has acquired a diverse set of business skills including sales and marketing, strategy planning, team building and business development. He joined Anritsu India in 2007 as its sixth employee. Now, in 2023, Anritsu India’s business has grown significantly, with the employee strength growing to over 180.
Anritsu provides cutting-edge solutions for upcoming telecommunications technologies ranging from indoor coverage mapping in small wireless systems to over the air testing in large wireless networks. “Our complete solutions are designed to meet the ever-changing market needs,” he says. Anritsu has accumulated key strengths in various technologies and areas, including signalling, protocols, conformance, wireline and radio frequency measurement. Anritsu uses these strengths to offer customers optimised T&M solutions, facilitating the fastest time-to-market.
Prashanth believes that as the number of downloads, uploads, streaming services and interactive augmented reality/virtual reality services delivered on mobile networks is increasing, greater capacity and higher data rates are needed. “So, one of the main drivers for the future 6G technology is to provide more capacity on the networks,” he says. Coverage is usually the other key parameter for wireless network technology. “Increase in coverage is generally not seen as a fundamental technology challenge, but more as a cost-of-deployment challenge,” he adds. Sub-1 GHz networks provide good coverage, and now 5G is adding satellite communications (non-terrestrial networks) to provide more cost-effective coverage of hard-to-reach areas. However, according to him, the interest in millimetre wave and terahertz technology for 6G is not driven by coverage requirements.
Prashanth has a BE in electronics and communication from Bangalore University, as well as an MBA in marketing and business development. When not working, he likes to spend time with his family and friends. One of his main hobbies is to restore antique vehicles.
