All work and play too

ICE PEOPLE: Ravi Sharma

Ravi Sharma

Ravi Sharma plays badminton whenever he gets a chance. At times for pleasure and at times for a cause! He was even the captain of the Roorkee University, from where he did engineering. He recently organised a tournament and also played a game to raise funds for the tsunami victims and for 'Dipali' "� a school for destitutes.

The jet-trotting executive "� he's the MD and president (South Asia) for telecom solutions provider Alcatel "� Sharma managed to raise a couple of lakhs from the tournaments.

Born in Meerut, Sharma's father was a government official working with the irrigation department. This resulted in Sharma spending his childhood in Meerut, then Lucknow and finally Benares.

His career began with Uptron, Uttar Pradesh government's telecom venture. He later moved over to the UB group. He was the executive assistant to Vijay Mallya, the liquor baron and flamboyant aviator.

With UB Group (India), Sharma worked for 10 years in telecommunications (Unitel) before he moved over to British Telecom. Sharma says he learned a lot from Mallya. A down-to-earth person, Sharma was vice-president, market development of British Telecom for India and SAARC countries. He joined Alcatel in January 2003 and is responsible for the company's operations in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives.

How did telecom happen? After completing his engineering and MBA, his focus was on marketing. He was looking for a marketing job and Uptron, a UP government initiative had just happened. Later, he joined as the regional director of London-based satellite operator Europe*Star, a joint venture of Alcatel with Loral Space. And when Alcatel was setting up its telecom operations, he happened to be the natural choice.

So what next? His ambition is to establish the India unit of Alcatel as the best division of the parent company.