About Mr. TVR

?Its over a year since I promised Mr. T.V. Ramachandran (a.k.a. TV, TVR, Mr. TVR and The Grand Old Man of Indian Telecoms) a chapter for a book he was considering writing. Long work hours and simple tiredness in the past 18 months have kept me from keeping that commitment. I have made a note to myself to never again make commitments I can’t keep and so would be unlikely to make such a promise – or other promises of the kind - in the future. And yet – what do you do when you have the greatest admiration and liking for someone who has played a pivotal role in your career?

How do you say “thank you for you” in a manner that the person knows you really mean it?

Well. One way is to put down this note on Linked In in hopes that other former colleagues will also comment on this note and remind TVR of much he is appreciated for all he has done for the industry and people in Indian telecoms for nearly 30 years!

I first met Mr. Ramachandran in late 1994. The first licences for GSM telephony had just been granted in India and I was being headhunted for the role of Project Manager for Essar Cellphone (today Vodafone India).

I was quite happy in the job I had but I did the headhunter a favour and went for an interview anyway. The location was the 3rd floor in a suite in Samrat Hotel in New Delhi. Samrat was a B-grade wannabe luxury hotel. Half stylish, half-seedy. This was where the budget project offices had been set up. I walked in and met this quiet gentleman in coat and tie. We had a good interview and right at the end he asked me “do you have any questions for me”? During the interview the job Mr. TVR had described did indeed seem more interesting, challenging and attractive than what I expected and so I was suddenly anxious to make a good impression. I had read up just a little bit on GSM and cellular telephony before the interview and shared the only thing I could remember from what I had read – “is it true that cellphones cause cancer?”. To this day I have absolutely no clue as to why Mr. TVR still offered me the job despite that brilliant (not) question from me!

We were five people in the New Delhi Cellular project at startup phase. Over time we became a tight knit team of 20 or so people. Many of us in our late 20s and early 30s, learning GSM and mobile telephony from scratch. We started every day at about 9 in the morning and ended at about 7-8 in the evening. Mr. Ramachandran was always first in the office before we arrived and was still there when we left. He was a secret smoker – secret as in his wife was not supposed to know that he was smoking – and could be often found having a smoke in the corridor of the hotel. That stopped though after a colleague answered the phone at work one day and it was Mr. Ramachandran's wife wanting to talk to her husband. (remember, there were only landlines at the time!) My colleague informed Mrs. Ramachandran that “Sir is in the corridor having a smoke, shall I go get him?”.... Mr. TVR was not amused even though the rest of us were.

Those were absolutely crazy days. We did everything in that little hotel room project office startup New Delhi cellular project that is now Vodafone India with millions of customers.

-??????We made business cases looking for funding to buy the equipment and in addition to making presentations to well established banks also met a few strange characters who just might have the deep pockets needed to finance part of the project.

-??????We sat in late night calls with Motorola in the US, understanding what an “MSC” (Main Switching Centre) – and other esoteric acronyms were. This was because it was the first time such equipment was entering India and its correct categorization towards Indian Customs could save us a lot on import duty.

-??????We became sudden logistics managers when the first handsets entered the country and there was nowhere safe to keep them (here I appointed two colleagues that I found very trustworthy – Amit and Kunal) – as guards to stay in the company guesthouse with the handsets. I then drove around the city the next day in an old Ambassador car together with my ex-husband - distributing handsets in the few shops we had.

-??????We flew to Bombay (now Mumbai) – carrying mockups of the logo for the owner of the company, Mr. Ruia – to choose the name. (“Essar Cellphone” was chosen).

-??????We became temporary real estate experts, all of us – due to the expensive costs of cell-sites and the need for speedy site acquisition. We were intense in our focus on rollout of the network in the race to bring cellular telephony to the country.

-??????We had to take the heartbreaking decision to put locks on cellsite doors to prevent poverty-stricken people from moving into the small rooms on the rooftops of the Cell sites due to the air-conditioning in the rooms.

-??????We ran “Operation Kickstart” to get people in the project to work in sync so that cell site acquisition was aligned with customer service complaints which in turn was connected to the sales plan which in turn was connected to coverage and network rollout plans.

Mr. TVR was a thorough gentleman through all this. I remember one day a colleague had gone out with a press release without checking with him if he was okay with the draft. I happened to look into his office a little while later and saw that the draft was lying on his table covered with notes and comments from him. “Oh good, Priya!”, he said when he saw me. “I really don’t like this draft so let’s make these updates together and then send it out”. I had to break the news to him that not only had the the press release been sent out, the newspapers had all picked up on it already. I still remember how still he became and all that moved was one little finger tapping on the table. He then simply said in a very low tone “this should not happen again” – and I tried to relay the emotion behind those quiet words to my culprit colleague. I think my colleague got the point. It never happened again, anyway!

I find it hard to explain how TVR managed to create a tight knit team out of a gang of very disparate people with different backgrounds and attitudes. The only common factor we had was that we all worked hard and had a lot of passion. We worked late and partied later. The advantage of having your office in a hotel is that the bars always have “Happy Hour”... The Essar Cellphone parties could be guaranteed to have at least one drunken event. The less said about those parties on Linkedin the better...

An example of passion and dedication that I want to share is the story of when there was a fire at the Main Switching Centre at Connaught Place. This was late at night on a weekend. All of us in the core team reached the spot soonest we heard about the fire even though there was nothing we could do. We were all just standing outside the building watching the blaze. One colleague was still stranded in the building and we were all shouting at him to jump into the fireman’s net spread below to receive him. This gentleman though was so dedicated that he first elected to save the CDRs (Call Data Records) of that day’s calls and threw those large spools of tape (remember, this was 1996) into the net first before jumping himself! I myself and a couple of other colleagues were first into the building with Mr. TVR and some firemen to assess the damage, all of us clad in helmets and heavy jackets. This kind of dedication existed in the whole team. I believe we all quite simply followed Mr. Ramachandran’s example. He was (and is) humble, self-effacing and completely focused on doing the job in the best possible manner - which is what I consider dedication.

We were all dedicated and passionate about the project but Mr. TVR was the most passionate of all. Something I do not think he knows is that we had a standing joke that the company brand name should have been “Ramtel” in his honour, given how dedicated he was to the company!

I could write stories about the Essar days forever. Like when we were “volunteered” by Mr. Ramachandran into the Essar Group Cricket Tournament and then he “volunteered” me to become the Team Manager. As usual we were in it to win it and the team put in some hard weeks of practice. We were the underdog playing away from our home grounds with 14 other teams in play – and we won!!! We won the championship trophy and were greeted at the railway station upon arrival by Atul leading a marching band playing for us!! Everyone on the platform was staring and trying to figure out if we were movie stars or celebrities of some kind. This was also Mr. TVR’s culture in a nutshell. Reward the wins and show your appreciation.

And this is why I write this and where I end it, Sir. I wanted to show my appreciation for you. You made my first and probably toughest assignment in my entire career a big win that I will carry forever. Thank you.?