CEO Forum: Mr. Vivek Mohan, President, Alcatel Lucent

Ont 26th Oct, we had invited Mr. Vivek Mohan, the President of Alcatel Lucent India to address the students of XLRI on "3G in India".

Highlights of the speech
The highlight of Mr. Vivek Mohan’s speech was how the introduction of 3G is going to revolutionize Indian telecom space. 3G would bring about a convergence of voice and data on to the mobile phone. This is what popularly referred to as ICE (Information, Communication and Entertainment). He suggested that Indian telecom market is growing at a fanatic level and the time has come when the power shifts from the Western economies to the emerging economies like India and China. As far as introduction of 3G is concerned, it is important for the telecos to learn from countries like Korea but implementation in India has to be unique taking into consideration Indian culture, taste and habits. In India, since the revenue generated from data is less than 10% compared to close to 50% in Korea, it is possible that the introduction of 3G might take sometime to mature. However, once it matures it is possible to bring the cost of downloading a video clip to less than Re 1 a minute. Mr. Mohan added that 3G in India is going to fulfill the unmet needs for voice and broadband in urban India and also bring down the costs of call in the rural areas. On 3G application in rural India, he referred to areas like “Telemedicine” where there is a of untapped business opportunity. This is one field entrepreneurs could eye after the rollout of 3G. On competition laid down by Wimax is concerned, he opined that Wimax will generally cater to the rural areas and hence there is no direct competition. In the urban areas, there will be also a lot of unexplored opportunities in Value Added Services like Location Based Services after the introduction of 3G.
Mr. Vivek, himself an alumnus of Harvard Business School, also dwelled on the importance of a MBA program and what students should do to gain the maximum benefit out of the same. He thought that networking and people’s skills were two most important skills every single student should have. When asked about entrepreneurship, he summed up by stating that “..always follow your heart..”.

About the Speaker
Vivek Mohan, President Alcatel-Lucent India took over the reins of the company in January 2008. Vivek has over 24 years of experience in developing and successfully managing businesses across a wide range of sectors and markets. As President of Alcatel-Lucent’s India operations, Prior to his current position Vivek was heading the Services Organisation at Alcatel-Lucent post the merger in December 2006. Before the merger, Vivek was President & CEO of Lucent Technologies India, he joined this position in May 2006.
Vivek began his career with Lucent Technologies in 2001 as Global Marketing and Sales Director of Business Restructuring. In 2002, Vivek moved to Lucent’s Supply Chain Team and was the Director of Business Restructuring for the Optical Networks Group (ONG), leading teams spread across the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany and China, engaged in manufacturing management, cost management, R&D and bids support. He was thereafter appointed as the Executive Director – Asia Pacific Supply Chain operations in Shanghai.
Way back in 1984, he founded Alok Industries and within four years built it into an $8 million business.
He has Bachelors in Computer Science from California State University and professionally qualified with a Masters degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Press Coverage:
Financial Express