?People should dream and not be afraid of it ?

He lives in the future. Kanwalinder Singh, senior vice-president, Qualcomm Inc, and president, Qualcomm India and South Asia, is actively engaged in research in technology. It is yet to hit the market but when it does, it will make connectivity and communication an everyday affair with the help of simple gadgets.

He is perplexed that most people in India fear the computer and other gadgets. What is so mysterious about technology, he wonders aloud. ?Most people in India look at the computer as a complex device. I want to make it simpler.? Seated away from his workspace in his Mumbai office and wearing a jacket without a tie (?I find ties very formal,? he says to the photographer), Singh relates with excitement how his team at Qualcomm is working to make 3G a mainstream service in India, supported by affordable devices and enriched collaboration in the ecosystem. 3G will also trigger the growth of wireless broadband in India. Yet, technology was not something Singh was introduced to in classrooms or workplaces. His association with it began in rural Nangal, famous for the Bhakra Nangal dam in Punjab in his growing years where his father and the villagers always spoke of doing work ?automatically?. The word translated into technology for Singh, which he saw being used to make work on agriculture easier. ?A lot of agriculturists way back then would adopt all kinds of machinery and capital equipment to go in for more automation.?

Singh recalls that very early on he was a detail-oriented person and would do projects on his own. ?I remember doing projects with wires lying around. I first used a computer in the ninth grade. Soon I started programming it too. I was comfortable with electronics all along.? It is not surprising then that he went on to pursue graduation in electronics and electrical communication from Punjab engineering college.

At his first job in Hitachi, he was sent to the Mecca of technology ? Japan. For him, his association with Hitachi stands out for two memorable lessons. The Japanese, he says, are disciplined about what they do. ? It was well-known that they have equipment, precision and focus in quality, but what was new for me was to discover that it began from the micron stage itself.? The other thing Singh appreciates, is their adherence to ethics. ?In 1983, when I was in Japan, one afternoon per week was set aside for cleaning out offices and this was done by both employees and the bosses. Even the CEO of Hitachi would do it. It was an eye opener for me coming from India where one is used to having others do these tasks,? he adds.

Education is the key to any development, Singh realised early on. It helped that he was always studious. The US was the next stop in this journey simply because that?s where most of his extended family members lived and were doing well. ?Its a place to go for education and for the opportunities it offers,? he says. Bucknell University in Pennsylvania helped him finetune his professional skills. Besides, there were many things so distinctly different in his course of study that ?rounded? his individuality. ?I took up teaching because of the scholarship and aid. Teaching at the School of Management forced me to look at a curriculum I had never seen before. It helped me become a good communicator. Engineering and management are related and link closely with the environment we live in. I think the single most important learning from my teaching stint was that if you know something, you should pass it on.?

When Singh?s doctorate proposal was rejected, it pushed him to work with technology firms and start his career earlier than he had envisaged. ?After my masters at Bucknell, I wanted to pursue my doctorate and was all set to have a ?Dr? against my name but my proposal on automated software development was not approved.? However, this proposal got the nod from the team at A&T Bell Laboratories, which had come to Bucknell University for campus recruitment. The rejection at the university was a blessing in disguise because he learnt at A&T how very large telecom networks are engineered, and to manage software. ?My happiest moment was when I received a patent on automated software testing.?

After a long stint in the US, Singh got an opportunity to come home. His India foray came courtesy Lucent Technologies but he did not stay long as he felt they were narrowly focussed on network sales. ?I came to India in 2002-03 when wireless started taking off. When Qualcomm came along, I took up the opportunity to work through the ecosystem and also devices besides the network. The journey has been phenomenal,? he says with enthusiasm inflecting his tone. ?CDMA technology then had less than 10 million subscribers and we set out to build a team and a business that grew to become extremely large. We did not envision the kind of growth that we have now. ?

Singh believes that it is his style of handpicking people for the job that has helped him to achieve high growth for the company. He is attracted by extremely ambitious people. ?People should dream and not be afraid of it. The goal here was to get a million subscribers, which was huge then. What we told the team was: ?No goal is big enough. You have to set incredibly large goals.? That culture has percolated down.? He does not think that it becomes daunting for some people? ?The key is to build relationships within the company and outside and also with end users and then one is working in concert with a lot of people. That is how 40 people here worked to get a one-million subscriber base.?

Singh is now looking to introduce gadgets into the marketplace that make working on computers a smarter and easy choice. ?Since we were building mobile devices, especially smart phones and high power devices, we invented chipsets that rival the power of those available in computers. In a mobile world, the handsets are designed for very low power consumption. A person must be able to carry it the whole day and the battery should last. We envision the same for computing? always connected through wireless broadband on which you can access the internet with all its capabilities; All the software for it would come from the internet and it would run on battery that lasts the whole day long.?

On the cards are two gadgets. The first is a smartbook for the classic computing world, which is the size of a netbook and has the simplicity of a smart phone and is light in weight. The other is Kayak, a desktop version with a display and a mouse and is always connected to the internet. It won?t be able to load software because all this will come from the internet. No CDs would be required and there would be no fear of virus. Both these gadgets will be out in the latter part of this year.

The US honed Singh?s skills through education and by offering career opportunities. However, it is also memorable for another reason. He met his wife Deborah, then an undergraduate pursuing English majors.

From India to the US and back, life has taken an ?interesting? turn for Singh. ?There is a lot more to be done at Qualcomm. There has been phenomenal growth in the technology industry and there is potential for so much more. I thrive on new opportunities and want to experience newer markets and challenges.?