Premkumar has over 20 years of work experience across various industries, including telecom, automobiles and engineering equipment. He has worked with brands such as Tata Teleservices, Castrol, Eureka Forbes and Thermax. At present, he leads Aircel’s operations in Himachal Pradesh as circle business head and is responsible for functions such as profit and loss, and sales.

According to him, the key challenges he faces are related to promoting the operator’s data services and creating a strong brand in a competitive market, which has as many as seven players. Himachal Pradesh’s hilly terrain presents additional operational challenges in terms of network roll-out for ensuring seamless coverage. “In a hilly topog-raphy like Himachal Pradesh, where the population is scattered, a multitude of towers is required along the length and breadth of the state to ensure seamless coverage, with many towers not even serving a population of 500. In such a scenario, ensuring the judicious utilisation of assets becomes all the more important,” he points out.

Throughout his career, Premkumar has been engaged either in building brands from scratch or turning around loss-making businesses. Of all his assignments, he identifies turning around Aircel’s operations in Salem, Tamil Nadu, as the most challenging one. While he was zonal business head for the Rest of Tamil Nadu (RoTN), the operator moved up from the fifth position to the first in terms of revenue share. Following this assignment, Premkumar was offered the position of head of post-paid services for RoTN. “The business was not doing remarkably well. I had two options: I could have either taken up the opportunity to turn things around and get noticed by assuming the post-paid role, or continued with my existing responsibilities at Salem and still make an impact. I chose to accept the challenge. During my three-year tenure, revenues grew by 150 per cent and the subscriber base expanded by 50 per cent,” he says.

With the aim of tapping potential business opportunities, Premkumar keeps a tab on emerging trends in the industry. He expects 2015 to be the beginning of an era of big bytes, which will revolutionise the way data services are used by consumers. With 4G services expected to be launched by several operators, and the 4G device ecosystem evolving fast, innovation in content will be a key driver for the industry.