As the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ozone Networks, Sanjeev Bobby Sarin has his hands full. He is responsible for defining the company’s strategy, raising funds and executing business plans. Ozone was the first company to set up a public Wi-Fi business in India, in 2007. Today, it has 6,500 access points across the country and aims to take this to 1 million by 2020. “I believe that Wi-Fi is will be a key building block to make India a broadband-driven nation. Wi-Fi hotspot networks will create a revolution, especially in Tier II and Tier III cities. The biggest challenge, however, is the lack of backhaul connectivity which raises costs and restricts roll-outs. Low device penetration is another concern,” he says.

A telecom veteran, Sarin has been involved in the industry for the past 27 years. He has been instrumental in building and managing several large and growing businesses across markets such as North America, the UK and Germany. As global vice-president of British Telecom Global Services, he led service delivery in over 100 countries, managing a team of 25,000.  He also led The Cloud, a key Wi-Fi operator in Europe, as group chief operating officer. After working in several global markets, he decided to come to India with the vision of building a Wi-Fi business. “Ozone soon became a space leader owing to the trust shown by large operators, who signed their first Wi-Fi interconnects with us. Airtel trusted us to deploy a large Wi-Fi mesh network across the Formula 1 race circuit at Greater Noida. We had limited time, but we got the solution engineered and deployed in 12 days. It ran seamlessly, serving over 30,000 users. It is still the most complex deployments in India,” he says.

Sarin believes in driving perfection, which reflects in his management style. Empowering people, incubating ideas and building leaders is what excites him the most when working with people and setting up ventures.

He has a master’s in engineering and computer science from the University of London. He was selected by Sir Christopher Bland of British Telecom for the Global 2020 Executive Leadership at Amos Tuck University, USA. A sports enthusiast, Sarin likes to play golf and hits the gym in his free time. To unwind, he watches movies and listens to music. His parents, originally from Delhi, have lived in the UK for over 50 years, where he was born. Although Skype keeps him in touch with his family in London, he admits to missing his mother’s excellent food at times.