Despite having worked for 14 years in the US melting pot, Sarvesh Asthana still feels he needs to equip himself better to handle the multicultural diversity of India. ?I am pretty good at it from an international perspective, having worked for so long in the US, but the Indian workforce presents unique challenges due to the incredible diversity here.”
As senior vice-president, technology, at Netxcell, he is responsible for the development, architecture, operations and IT as well as for technical competence in the VAS and enterprise businesses.
Managing the pressures of this job requires “situational leadership”, as he puts it. ?I cut across hierarchies and encourage discussions. I prefer a participatory style of management where individuals have an understanding and clear knowledge of the task at hand.”
Of course, his 20 years and more work experience helps. An electronics engineer from HBTI Kanpur, he has worked with many wireless network infrastructure providers, mobile device providers and wireless service providers globally.
Prior to his current role, he worked as general manager at Reliance Communications, where he headed the VAS, access devices and technical solutions teams. He has also worked with companies like Nokia, Alcatel and TCS.
He says his habit to ?create innovation in mundane things”? has made each assignment exciting, which is why choosing any one in particular as his most memorable is impossible. ?At Nokia, for instance, my focus was on packet data-based applications and protocols. This taught me the importance of product-centric scaled innovation. Working for a start-up in central California (which later got acquired by Alcatel), where my focus was on wireless broadband data, gave me the opportunity to work in all nodes in the wireless network architecture. At Reliance, I was able to see the effort needed and challenges faced while deploying, managing and selling the services to end-subscribers,” he says.
Having dealt with different facets of technology, Asthana is geared up to meet the challenges of the VAS industry. He explains, ?The challenge lies in knowing the subscriber’s needs, when he wants it and what is his preferred channel of delivery. This will help VAS players to target specific segments of the diverse subscriber base with relevant content.”?
