In a career spanning close to three decades, Sriram T.V. has worked with different organisations across the entire ICT value chain including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Alcatel, Comverse, Ericsson and Juniper; telcos like Bharti Airtel; and IT companies like Wipro. In his current role, as director, consulting and business development, at Juniper Networks for India and SAARC, he is responsible for driving thought leadership and demand generation, and creating a strong value proposition for customers across service providers, enterprise, defence and government verticals. He also leads Juniper’s cloud and security solutions for all the segments in India. “I have always been excited about building something from scratch (be it new technology, product/service or business) and making it operational for contributing to the revenue growth of the organisation,” says Sriram.

According to him, the past 18-24 months have been tough for the Indian telecom market with operators witnessing the severe impact of consolidation. The aggregated outstanding debt of the industry, estimated at Rs 8 trillion, is far too high for comfort. The continuing price war is not enabling the revenues to grow quickly enough to service that debt. However, investments will have to continue to expand the 4G reach, and more capex will be required for emerging technologies such as 5G in the near future.

“Until the large players have strengthened their financials, it is going to be a tough situation, as they will be very prudent in terms of capex allocation in new initiatives,” he adds.

While challenges exist in the market, Sriram believes that the data consumption happening across all operators presents an opportunity for future growth. “It is estimated that only 50 per cent of the active subscribers are on 4G mobile broadband. Expanding into this segment will be a good opportunity for telcos in the near term,” he adds.

As for his management style, he strongly believes in a collaborative and participative approach. “Providing an open (fearless and non-hierarchical) discussion environment to the team brings out the best in them,” he says.

He is an electronics and communications graduate, and holds a postgraduate diploma in management. In his spare time, he loves to travel and pursue trekking, photography and cooking. His family includes his wife and their two children – a son who is in college and a schoolgoing daughter.