Sunil Gupta brings to the table over 20 years of experience in building and running data centres. His experience encompasses the entire life cycle management including business planning, sales, business development, data centre construction and operational-isation, customer service delivery, and revenue assurance. Over the years, Gupta has worked with companies such as Reliance Communications, Global Telecom Services, Iris Software and Angel Solutions.

As chief operating officer (COO) at Netmagic Solutions at present, he is responsible for the company’s operations in the internet data centre and IT managed services space. According to Gupta, “The rapid growth of e-commerce in the country, coupled with the increasing demand for cloud computing and big data, is amongst the key growth drivers for the data centre business. For instance, scaling up to keep pace with the rapid business growth is a big challenge for e-commerce players. This challenge cannot be overcome through the traditional approach to IT, which entails huge capex. However, with the adoption of technologies such as cloud, it is easier for companies to move in and out of an IT infrastructure set-up as per their requirements, without incurring huge costs.”

Gupta has worked on several challenging assignments during the course of his career. However, he considers his current mandate – of building Netmagic Solutions’ seven-storey data centre, Mumbai DC5, his most challenging assignment. The challenge lies in the scale of the project. With an investment of Rs 7 billion, the upcoming facility will support 300,000 square feet of data centre capacity. Mumbai DC5 is expected to be completed by July 2015 and will reportedly be the country’s largest data centre.

Gupta attributes his success to a profit-driven customer-centric approach towards business. As a leader, he believes in striking a balance between a process-driven approach and agility. He explains, “The company functions as per the processes put in place. Since customer interest is paramount for the company, the management has listed specific parameters. However, if need be, these processes can be bypassed and employees can take proactive steps to ensure customer satisfaction.”