Cut out for the job

ICE PEOPLE: Thierry A Raymaekers

He takes leisure as seriously as he takes his work. So you can frequently catch him taking off on, say, a camel tour in Mongolia or a sailing trip in the Philippines even as he hops from Singapore to China to India on work.

"After all there's only that much work that your body and mind can do at a time. Retreating into the nature, like a couple of hours behind a camel's back in the eternal grasslands of Mongolia recharges your batteries," feels Thierry A Raymaekers, managing director, marketing Asia Pacific, Irdeto.

A global player in content security solutions providing encryption technology to its clients across 60 countries, Irdeto plans to focus on India in a big way. Having already deployed about 150000 smart cards in the country since its entry one and a half years ago, Raymaekers aims at tapping the digital TV market.

"With digital migration happening, India's become very attractive in terms of opportunities. We are talking to DTH operators, broadcasters and content owners who would need our end-to-end solutions," he confides.

But isn't he pitted against a niche market in India wherein few people are aware of the importance of software solutions for content protection?

That's precisely why the company is simultaneously involved in educating not just potential clients like content owners, aggregators and cable operators but even the media on the need to protect content and in turn multiply revenues, he explains.

With an MBA/MIM degree from Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management (US), a Law degree from Gent University (Belgium) and a Master's degree in foreign trade, Raymaekers appears to be cut out for his job of expanding content protection from traditional television broadcasting to the broadband and mobile markets.

"Our job is like that of offering fire insurance. While we can hope our clients don't need to come to us but if they don't, they stand to lose," quips the European who calls Beijing "home" simply because he's stationed there.