MANAGEMENT TEAM
Ruchir Godura — Chief Operating Officer
Ruchir brings to VNL broad management experience in the telecom industry, across operators (Airtel and AT&T) and equipment suppliers (UTStarcom, Telsima and Aperto) in North America and India covering engineering, customer service, product management and sales roles. Until recently, Ruchir was CMO, Enterprise Services, at Bharti Airtel - India’s largest GSM operator. Before Airtel, Ruchir helped establish the WIMAX business at Telsima as head of worldwide sales. Prior to that he spent nearly nine years with UTStarcom, setting up their global customer support services in New Jersey before moving to India as country manager, South Asia operations Ruchir holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a Master of Science degree in computer science from the University of Delaware.
Krishna Sirohi — Chief Technology Officer
Krishna Sirohi has more than 20 years experience from technology development leadership within both the telecom field and the defense sector. Before joining VNL, he served with three of the largest and most respected R&D organizations in India – Indian Telephone Industries Bangalore (1988-91), Bharat Electronics Ghaziabad (1991-95) and Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT, 1995-2004). His main professional strengths are innovative product definition, architectural evolution, and establishing and managing large technology development competence centres. Krishna is well versed in design and development of command communication control & intelligence (C3I) systems, large capacity digital (PSTN/ISDN) switches, and GSM based core networks. During his C-DOT tenure, he lead mobile technology development and commercial operations of DOT’s (BSNL) IMPCS pilot project. He has also represented DOT (India’s Department Of Telecom) in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) standardization, as vice chair of the special study group on “Beyond 3rd generation Systems” during the last study period 2000-2004. As ITU-T’s SSG, he lead the standardization of FMC. Krishna has a masters degree in engineering from Indian Institute of Science.
Sanjeev Kakkar — Chief Strategy Officer
Sanjeev Kakkar has more than 22 years of experience in telecom, encompassing product development, project implementation and operations. Sanjeev has championed indigenous product development in the field of wireless components & systems and delivered many firsts to the Indian market. In 1997, he won the Indian Government’s prestigious National Award for Best Indigenous Technology. Before Joining VNL, Sanjeev served as Chief Technical Officer with Shyam ACeS (a GMPCS service provider). He also served as Board Director of Central Electronics Ltd (a public sector enterprise).
Sameer Kumar — Head of Finance
Sameer Kumar is a Chartered Accountant with over 19 years of experience in core finance, treasury and strategy functions across diverse industry verticals. He has spearheaded bulk fund raising, M&A initiatives and established prudent financial governance systems for large corporations. Until recently, Sameer was CFO of Sona Group, the world’s largest manufacturer of precision engineering components. At Sona, he led the team that accomplished the largest cross border acquisition of its kind in the precision engineering component space, with structured funding arrangements.
Sameer has wide ranging experience in corporate governance, budgetary controls, risk mitigation, cost management and internal controls. Prior to Sona, Sameer worked with reputed names in telecom equipment manufacturing, IT and auto ancillaries.