Ravi Chauhan?s affinity for speed and penchant for long drives are an extension of the man himself. He talks at a fast clip and completes sentences before you can start yours. We are not sure whether he would enjoy the sobriquet of ?Flying Sikh? though, but Ravi has a free flowing, unobtrusive manner of engagement that can break ice at first go.
Presently the managing director of Juniper Networks India, Ravi made his mark in industry circles with his long stint at Nortel India where he held the same position. If you haven?t guessed by now, Juniper is a network equipment major and a Cisco competitor. Ravi moved to the company soon after Avaya acquired Nortel?s struggling enterprise unit.
The IIM-A alumnus is a hardcore technology man, but someone who is not lost to the world of marketing and hard-sell. Insiders say that he is not easily flummoxed, and that he can sell a cone of ice to an Eskimo, if need be.
Ravi?s brief at Juniper is to understand the needs of Indian customers and to help them build the high-performance networks that their businesses need. While announcing Ravi?s entry into Juniper, this is what the company had to say, ?With the appointment of Ravi, we are now in a better position to grow this footprint further.?
Such kind of pressure and expectation sit easily on him. He has seen very difficult days at Nortel, when the company went through intense financial turmoil.
Ravi had to navigate the company during this period, without it affecting employee morale. So he?s no stranger to huge challenges. He has also held a number of key positions with industry leaders like Cabletron Systems, Digital Equipment India Limited, Wipro Information Technology Limited and Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Company, prior to his Nortel days.
At Juniper, though he has immense resources to choose from. The $3 billion firm is no stranger to acquisitions, having bought Ankeena Networks, a media software company recently. Its net revenues for the first quarter of 2010 increased 19% on a year-on-year basis to $912.6 million.
?But the cultures at Nortel and Juniper are similar. Nortel is a typical Canadian firm, down to earth and innovative. At Juniper too, there is a similar culture where innovation can thrive,? says Ravi.
?We have a great team at Juniper, our aim is to provide high performance at competitive prices,? he says. But isn?t Juniper playing David to Cisco?s Goliath? ?I don?t think so. For example, look at our network operating system Junos, which is a reliable, high performance network for routing, switching and security. It reduces the time necessary to deploy new services and decreases network operation costs by up to 41%. So we have advantages that others do not possess.?
Juniper has a solid value proposition for the Indian market, he says. ?We offer better technology, with better economics than our competition. The first short term goal is to get this message out in the market, and dramatically increase our consideration rate. Any one purchasing data networking solution in India should evaluate Juniper technology,? Ravi says while ordering sandwiches for a quick lunch.
The demand for faster speeds and increased data usage on networks puts Juniper in a very strong position. All service providers are facing tremendous pressures to reduce cost given the competitive pressure on their ARPUs. They are looking at moving their voice and data traffic from existing multiple backbones to converged IP backbone network to reduce the cost of transporting voice and data significantly. ?This plays directly into Juniper?s area of strength as we have the world?s best core routing technology,? Chauhan explains.
?Security is becoming a core issue in almost every aspect of networking. Once again, this emphasis on security plays directly to Juniper?s strength as we are the world?s biggest network security player,? he adds.
The high demand for consumer voice, video, gaming and data devices has led to greater need for data bandwidth. ?This is driving the demand for our core competency?building secure data networking equipment for enterprises and service providers,? he emphasises.
Lunch done, Ravi takes a quick look at his watch. ?We should meet every quarter to discuss,? he says before entering his Hyundai Sonata. Just a Sonata for a man who loves cars?a thought whizzed by.
?My dream is to make a car-buying decision based 100% on emotion and 0% on logic. And that in my book would be to buy a big bad all terrain SUV,? he signs off.