Ranjeet Koul
VP and Country Manager, APAC and MEA, Aeris Communications
Ranjeet Koul likes to describe himself as a tech and sales person. He started his career with Modi Xerox in the late 1990s and then went on to work with HP, Tata Avaya and later Intel, where he spent over a decade. Since 2018, he has been working with Aeris Communication and is currently vice-president (VP) and country manager for the APAC and MEA regions. He is responsible for managing the company’s P&L for the APAC region, excluding India, Bangladesh and Nepal. He also looks after the African, Middle East and European markets.
Koul believes that Covid has brought about a massive digital transformation across organisations. “Pre-Covid, the level of technology adoption was very slow. Most organisations were risk averse and wanted to continue with their legacy IT systems. There were only a few large organisations that had dedicated roles for chief information officers. All that has changed now. Everything has gone virtual, and data consumption is happening at an astronomical rate. As a result, technologies such as AI and machine learning are becoming a reality. They are making sense to people. IT and telecom are becoming the backbone of operations, and executive teams are taking decisions based on data analysis,” he notes.
Among his many memorable assignments, the last one at Intel, where he was dealing with IoT, was the most exciting for Koul. “Intel being a semiconductor company, it was a great learning experience to create and market solutions that impact the lives of customers. The experience helped me a lot when I joined Aeris, as I can now put that learning into implementation,” he says.
Koul follows an inclusive management style. As a leader, he likes to be in the thick of things, fold up his sleeves and support his team at all times. He believes in training employees and imparting skills that help them achieve their full potential.
Koul is an engineer from BIT Bangalore and has an MBA from Western International University, USA. He is an avid reader, and Covid has allowed him to pursue this passion more fully. “Before Covid, I used to ride my 500 cc, Royal Enfield, to unwind, but post-Covid, most of my spare time is spent reading and playing with my pet at home,” he says. His family comprises his wife, a mathematician, and their teenage daughter. His father is an army veteran and Koul attributes many of his personality traits to his growing up all across India owing to his father postings.
