A Long Innings
From his Bangalore headquarters, V.S. Gopi Gopinath leads AT&T’s enterprise business in India ?? a job he took on in February 2008 ?? to help the company capitalise on the country’s burgeoning demand for telecom services. Driving investment and resources to ensure the sustained growth of the company’s enterprise business is his key task.
AT&T has been present in India for over 20 years.The company has established excellent relationships with domestic carriers and gained a deep understanding of the Indian business environment.
Being the first foreign carrier to receive the new international long distance/national long distance/internet service provider licences has allowed the company to expand its portfolio of services and work directly with customers on all aspects, from contracting to delivery and implementation. This has enabled AT&T to have more control over quality, reliability and service.
“Our strategy is to deliver differentiated and value-added IP and data services and solutions to companies whose organisational and business models are being rethought and transformed through improved communications infrastructures. Our goal is to be the `provider of choice’ serving the needs of enterprises for competitive, flexible and integrated wide area IP networking solutions spanning the globe,” he says.
He took on the job because the business suited his particular skill sets and capabilities. The market was growing in India and AT&T recognised the need for a senior management presence in the country. “It is an exciting market here and I thought it would be the most dynamic market for communications services among all markets of the world,” he says.
Gopinath started his professional career after obtaining an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Wharton was the most challenging and rewarding two years of my life,” he says.
Prior to Wharton, Gopinath had obtained an MS in environmental engineering from the University of Iowa and a BE from the College of Engineering at the University of Madras.
After his MBA, he joined GTE’s management development programme and then moved to GTE Sprint in Dallas, Texas. In 1988, he moved to Kansas City, where GTE Sprint is headquartered. He held a variety of senior positions in marketing, product development and information services. Soon afterwards, he moved to Reston, Virginia, as executive director, strategic planning, to work on a joint venture of Sprint with France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.
“In 1995, I moved to Europe to join Global One, a $1 billion, 6,000-employee global telecom services provider as head of the carrier services business in Europe. I went on to become senior vice-president and general manager of the Asia-Pacific region in 2000, responsible for a $150 million revenue stream,” he says.
In 2001, Gopinath moved to Reston to manage Equant’s (Global One had merged with Equant by this time) data and IP product line and subsequently, all of Equant’s products. “I spent my last year at Equant as senior vice-president responsible for growing the services business. During this time, service revenues increased by 16 per cent.”
Four years later, he joined AT&T as vice-president of its GM2006 Programme that resulted in AT&T receiving a $1 billion, five-year global networking contract from General Motors. The GM2006 Programme was one of the largest and most complex outsourcing contracts in the US for a major multinational company.
Asked to describe the challenges before him, he says that they include maintaining a clear perspective on the current financial crisis and recognising that like so many difficult periods, “this too shall pass”.
“We need to take a long-term view of the crisis and ensure that any communications-related solution that can improve the cost structure and business velocity of enterprises is understood to be a good investment,” he says. The example he cites is that of Telepresence, a solution that he says will improve the quality of communications among employees, and with the customers and suppliers of an enterprise, while at the same time improving its cost structure.
“The icing on the cake is the improvement that the solution offers to the personal life of employees due to reduced travel. If we can help introduce various tools of communication to enterprises operating in India, it would improve their ability to serve their customers better and at a lower cost,” he explains.
On future trends, Gopinath anticipates continued innovation and an increase in the use of communications tools in improving the efficiency of staff and enterprises. On the consumer side, the use of mobile solutions and internet-based solutions will continue to make individuals and enterprises more efficient.
“If we can reduce the use of fossil fuels by conducting more business using the mobile phone or the internet, that’s better for us as individuals and better for the environment. The mobile market in India is showing the most prolific growth amongst all the markets of the world. This will lead to improvement in lifestyles,” he says.
As to his own “work style”, Gopinath says his main strengths come from his experience of having worked in different telecommunications markets at various stages of regulation and maturity. Whether it was in a swiftly deregulating American market in the 1980s or the “big bang” move in the European Union to deregulate in the late 1990s, or the mix of highly regulated and deregulated markets in the Asia-Pacific region at the turn of the century, they were all different in some ways, although similar in others.
His other asset is the experience of having lived several years in the US, Europe, Hong Kong and India, which has given him the ability to work across diverse cultures.
“A colleague of mine in Brussels once told me that Belgians are good at several languages ?? French, Flemish, German, English, etc. ?? but do not excel in any one.Similarly, one of my weaknesses could be my flitting from country to country and, to some extent, working in different functions,” he says.
Like many managers, he straddles both approaches to getting work done ?? sometimes delegating heavily and sometimes being hands-on. When a particular function is going well, he manages by exception. When there are issues or when there is a shift in strategy, he adopts more of a micro-management approach.
As he was growing up, a seventh grade teacher, his parents, and the people he read about in books, were all sources of inspiration for him. But if he had to single out one person, it would be his grandfather, who believed in hard work, punctuality, a healthy lifestyle and a commitment to education.
“Even when I was in the first grade, and I was sick, he would carry me to class and carry me back home because he did not want me to miss a single day of class, as long as my sickness was not contagious. He insisted on my attending class every single day whether I was in first grade or second grade, and whether it was the very first day of class, or the day before or after a festival,” he says.
Gopinath adds, “He drilled it into me that missing class was not an option and I carried this attitude through high school and college to graduate school and beyond. His commitment to school and work was an early lesson to me that has had a significant impact on everything I have accomplished since childhood.”
His father was an employee of the Tamil Nadu government and Gopinath spent most of his childhood in the state, mostly in Chennai.
In his spare time, Gopinath likes to be with his family and read up on current affairs and business. One of his longstanding passions till he graduated was cricket, though he hasn’t played the game for the past 30 years. He was captain of his high school cricket team and vice-captain of the college cricket team during his final year in college. At the time, one of the young openers on his team showed a lot of promise. Little did he know then that this player, Kris Srikkanth, would go on to be a part of the 1983 World Cup winning team.
