Ram Vishwanathan is determined to fight out the Devas deal.
The Antrix-Devas deal for S-band spectrum has finally been annulled by the government. Perhaps, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wanted to bury the controversy as soon as possible because the department of space, which controls Indian Space Research Organisation and Antrix, its commercial arm, falls under his jurisdiction. Corruption, as the opposition had alleged, had happened right under Singh’s nose.
Yet Devas president and CEO Ramachandran “Ram” Vishwanathan is not daunted. Devas was awaiting a formal communication from the government, mediapersons were told on Thursday. A day earlier, Ram had signalled his intention to fight it out in a court of law, with the statement that Devas “will take strong, including legal, steps to protect the company’s rights and interests”.
Clearly, this is not the last we have heard of the matter.
Just who is Ram? He is a veteran of 20 years in the internet and satellite communications space — sectors that are controlled tightly by the government. He has studied engineering at Stanford and finance and marketing at MIT Sloan. He worked with McKinsey and Goldman Sachs before he signed up with WorldSpace. Ram’s next job was as chief strategy and corporate development officer at Cidera, a leader in broadband Internet content distribution. He was next seen as the managing director of Forge Advisors, a strategic consultancy and technology incubator.
This was when he came in close contact with the ISRO brass. In March 2003, a presentation was made to senior ISRO officers in Washington DC on “positioning Antrix for success in the global market”, beginning with an overview of the satellite industry, suggesting a strategic roadmap backed with case studies, and proposing partnerships to grow. It seems that he made quite an impact because Forge was called for more discussions by ISRO. One of his proposals was digital multimedia services delivered via hybrid satellite terrestrial networks to mobile handheld terminals. The buy-in was complete. Everybody acknowledged this was an innovative service opportunity not only in India but around the world. A joint venture was proposed between Antrix and Forge.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Antrix agreed to lease capacity — S-band spectrum — for the venture. This is how Devas came up. In May 2006, Devas got its first round of funding from Columbia Capital and Telcom Ventures, with approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board. Everything appeared on track apart from the delay in the launch of the satellite due to the problems with GSLV. “We were even discussing third-party launch in the last few months,” Ram says.
Then the lid blew off. When the government had sold broadband wireless for Rs 35,000 crore, how could it hand out similar S-band spectrum for as little as Rs 1,000 crore? Coming on top of the 2G spectrum and the Commonwealth Games scams, this became too hot for the government to handle. Ram, on his part, is defiant. “Cancellation of the deal will have huge ramifications. The comparison with 3G both on the pricing and spectrum capacity count is inaccurate. The Comptroller and Auditor General has not come out with its report as yet and we should wait for it before jumping to any conclusion,” he says. “You can’t compare apples with oranges.”