“The sheer discipline, credibility, courage, and the determination to sacrifice oneself for the nation motivated me to join the army. While I was unable to pursue this ambition, I focused on integrating these traits into my personality, which have helped me become a strong leader. Of course, these characteristics had to be modified slightly to fit the demands of the corporate world,” he says.

As vice-president at Netxcell Limited, these demands are huge. Khan is responsible for managing and enhancing the company’s business among existing and new clients. Besides, he is also responsible for augmenting revenues by launching new products, ensuring rapid uptake of these offerings and increasing Netxcell’s footprint in domestic and international markets.

“Developing strategic alliances with key value-added service (VAS) players to ensure our products and solutions reach the correct audience (telecom operators) and building strong brand equity for Netxcell in new markets are my key focus areas,” he says.

According to him, the company’s growth prospects are bright as the VAS space is set to witness substantial growth. “Mobile VAS is poised for tremendous growth, fuelled by niche services. As the world moves towards an advanced technological era, data solutions and cloud are emerging as important future trends. Also, data solutions seem to be overshadowing voice-based solutions, with an increasing number of data services and applications becoming popular amongst subscribers,” he comments.

Developing markets like India and Africa are still witnessing growth in their subscriber base, which will be fuelled by the penetration of VAS in rural areas, he notes. “VAS will drive growth volumes for the entire telecom sector,” he predicts.

In the nearer term, however, he says, “The challenge is to scale up Netxcell’s operations further by enhancing our customer base to include all leading operators and providing them with niche solutions that help them drive up revenues. We are also working closely with system integrators on various projects, where our core competence comes into play. The target before me is to take Netxcell to the next level of growth by utilising the company’s technological abilities to deliver advanced data and voice solutions.”