In a professional career spanning over 30 years, A.S. Rajgopal has gained immense global exposure working with organisations across the telecom and IT domains. He has been associated with organisations such as Dell, Microsoft, Kellogg, Yale and ISB, which has inculcated in him a technology-driven vision coupled with strategic business planning. “I was responsible for launching Dell Services in India and Microsoft Windows across 38 countries,” he says. Further, his stint with Reliance Communications gave him an opportunity to build and spearhead the company’s enterprise and data centre business, which delivered revenues of over Rs 10 billion. In his current role as CEO and MD, NxtGen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies, Rajgopal is responsible for building leading-edge products and services that enable the “business of technology” while understanding the “technology of businesses”. Overseeing strategic and business planning, sales and marketing progress, alliances and human resource management, and maintaining NxtGen’s high social responsibility are other critical aspects of his role.
Rajgopal envisions NxtGen to be a trusted market leader in the data centre industry through clear differentiators in the company’s operating style and ethos, which help provide customers the real-time solutions they need. “However, developing and delivering attractive and robust IT services to enterprise customers remain major challenges,” he says.
The telecom industry responded to the pandemic with several operational improvements and became the bedrock for many businesses to recover in 2021. “While 2020 was about operational improvements, 2021 is about disruptive technologies,” says Rajgopal. He believes open radio access networks, edge computing, 5G, integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into the network edge, next-generation IoT, cloud and microservices will be the key trends in the coming years.
Rajgopal’s ability to learn and grow from past experiences and mistakes is what keeps him going. “Understanding the industry well, being aware of solutions, and offering the best to consumers have helped me sail through in my professional career,” he says. He summarises his leadership philosophy through a quote by Andrew Carnegie, “Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.”
Rajgopal enjoys gardening in his spare time. He also likes reading about technology, playing cricket, cycling and hiking. He prefers spending his weekends with his family and friends.