As director of marketing and alliances for Hughes Communications India Limited?s (HCIL) enterprise division, Premal Gandhi has his hands full. He is responsible for developing and launching products and services, identifying new areas of growth, brand management, and engaging and partnering with system integrators, operators and consultants to jointly offer enterprise solutions to customers.
Identifying the challenges before HCIL, he says, ?The key challenge is to increase our market share in the VSAT segment. We cornered 60 per cent of this space in 2012 and plan to enhance it to over 70 per cent by the year-end. This has to be achieved while keeping an eye on the bottom line and managing costs through innovation in technologies.?
To ensure the company achieves these targets, Gandhi tracks the sector closely. He notes that pricing dynamics have made India amongst the cheapest markets in the world. However, he believes that the market for aggressive pricing has bottomed out. ?Going forward, either cost will be optimised further at the expense of infrastructure growth and quality or service, or the increased cost burden of the same will be passed on to users,? he says.
During the course of his career, Gandhi has worked across several industries, in companies such as Sprint RPG and Zenith Infotech. He has also worked briefly in the biomedical field as a service engineer with a German company and tried his hand at entrepreneurship. He joined HCIL 12 years back. His formative years at the company were challenging yet satisfying. As a programme manager, he was responsible for managing multiple programmes simultaneously for companies like Colgate, HDFC Bank, Asian Paints and Larsen & Toubro. ?That was an exciting phase. I contributed effectively not only to the growth of these customers but also to HCIL. I got a ring-side view and an understanding of what goes into decision-making,? says Gan-
dhi. ?My early days at HCIL helped me fine-tune skills such as planning, multi-tasking, enhancing customer satisfaction, and being an effective communicator. All these skills have held me in good stead in the later years of my career in sales and marketing.?
As a leader, Gandhi practises what he calls a ?situational management style?, which is based on the end objective to be attained for the company, team or individual.
Gandhi?s weekends are devoted to his wife and daughter, and taking short trips in and around Mumbai. On weekends, he unwinds by reading, listening to music, and catching up with friends.
