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The homecoming

Swaminathan Krishnan, Senior Vice-president and Chief Marketing Officer, Sasken Communication Technologies, is a self-made achiever. He shares with Tanu Talwar his contributions to India’s telecom industry

Swaminathan Krishnan, Senior Vice-president and Chief Marketing Officer, Sasken  Communication Technologies, is a self-made achiever. He started his career as a sales engineer with HCL in 1985, selling PABX systems. Swaminathan Krishnan’s strong focus, determination and diligence to motivate and setup result-oriented teams, has led him to cross numerous benchmarks in his career.

Sasken Communication Technologies is an embedded communication solutions company that helps businesses across the telecom value chain accelerate product development life cycles. With Krishnan responsible for business development, planning corporate strategies as well as deciding upon mergers and acquisitions, the company has embarked upon a strong growth path and has crossed several milestones, besides gaining unquestionable trust from its customers comprising of some of the leading names in the telecom vertical. These accomplishments have been the result of well-formed marketing initiatives and policies designed to position Sasken as a trusted communication partner.

The early years

Coming from a close-knitted family in Bangalore, Krishnan believes that it is his value-based education and middleclass upbringing that has enabled him reach this level. His father is a retired professor from the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), and mother is a homemaker. After completing his schooling from the Bishop Cotton Boys’ School (Bangalore), he went to do Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from the National Institute of Engineering (Mysore), and graduated in 1984. It was here that he met his wife, Rekha. Thereafter, Krishnan joined HCL in 1985 as a sales engineer selling PABX systems. A year later, he moved out to join the UB Telecom Group where he handled product development, technology transfer and worked with the testing and field engineering division of the company. 

True calling

It was during this period that Krishnan realised that his true inclination lay towards management and dealing in marketing and finance. “While I was working with the UB Group, I became extremely passionate about management and business development. Then again, I was also looking at future career opportunities that provided challenges and helped me explore other dimensions,” he explains. After three years with the UB Group, Krishnan went ahead and joined ATS, a subsidiary of the SERCO PLC group in Bahrain, in 1989. He was designated as the Divisional Manager responsible for major account management and was the Profit Centre Head. 

Return to India

After working with ATS for about seven years, Krishnan decided to return home and took up the position of Vice-president at Tata Teleservices. He was responsible for business development, planning and representation at standard bodies. Krishnan says, “From 1995, I have been actively engaged in the telecom network expansion in India. Besides wanting to return to my homeland, one of the major reasons that prompted me to return to India was the telecom boom that the country was undergoing. When I graduated, India had one phone per 1000 people and today that figure is 16 phones per 100 people. We have come a long way and I have had pleasure and privilege of playing a small role in it.”  

However, even though Krishnan was among the top ranks within Tata Teleservices, his job kept him away from his hometown, Bangalore. It was due to this reason that he decided to join Sasken Communication Technologies in 2000, and worked as a Chief Marketing Officer till 2002, before moving back to Tata Teleservices as Corporate VP and then headed Global Marketing at Tata Infotech. Explaining the reason behind this shift, Krishnan says, “When I returned to India, I was looking at settling down in my hometown. However, my work with Tata Teleservices required me settle in Mumbai. Due to this reason, I decided to join Sasken.” However, when Tata Teleservices decided to expand its network, his former employer, who was looking at bringing together the key members required for network expansion, once again approached him. Looking at the challenging nature of the work, Krishnan accepted and took up the position of Corporate VP in 2002. But then again his work profile required him to travel constantly. Hence just before Sasken went public, he returned to the company to become the Senior Vice-president and Chief Marketing Officer.

Talking about his association with Sasken Communications, Krishnan says, “Besides giving me the opportunity to return to my hometown, the work culture at Sasken also attracted me to join the company.  It is a company that is focussed on the communications sector with an excellent track record of innovation.” Ever since, he started out with the company, Krishnan believes his two most prominent accomplishments to be the acquisitions of Botnia, a company in Finland and iSoftTech, a Chennai-based organisation.  “These two acquisitions presented numerous challenges for me and my team as we were required to study and analyse intricate details relating to the business, legal, financial as well as the HR aspects of these companies before finalising the acquisition route,” he adds. 

Besides climbing the professional ladder, Krishnan strongly believes in maintaining a work-life balance. According to Krishnan, it has been his family that has been a constant source of support and motivation to his professional growth. He says, “It’s extremely important to maintain a work-life balance in order to succeed.” Discussing his future plans, Krishnan strongly believes in giving back to the society and aims at taking up teaching business strategy and marketing in high tech industries as a subject in one of the B-schools. However, this plan shall materialise once he completes his Masters in Management that he is currently pursuing from the Lancaster University. 

In his free time, Krishnan likes to travel, listen to music and read. Being an ardent reader he has a very large library of books and an excellent study where he takes refuge everyday after work.