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 Chauhan says that he has enjoyed working with excellent teams. "I believe in hiring very good individuals, even if they take time to learn to collaborate on tasks as a team. My policy is to give them all the resources they need to accomplish a task and the freedom to innovate and deliver the best. I am a strong advocate of employee empowerment," he says.

As the managing director for India, he is focusing on developing innovative solutions in an era which he says is characterised by a growing demand for anywhere, anytime connection and communication –­ a trend known as hyperconnectivity.

"Hyperconnectivity is a phenomenon that is driven by the proliferation of handheld devices and the convergence of wired, wireless and IP telephony. Cameras, MP3 players, security systems, appliances and much more are all demanding to be connected, to be linked, and to be `interusable'."

As a company, Nortel has been focusing on growing the global enterprise sales to more than 25 per cent over the past 12 months. The growth in enterprise in Asia has been over 30 per cent. Nortel is equally serious about growing the enterprise business in India.

"Most people know Nortel as a carrier company which, of course, is important to Nortel. The convergence between carriergrade services and applications in enterprises is something that Nortel believes in and is uniquely positioned to deliver. Nortel is investing significantly in unified communications, SOHO platforms and applications, LTE and in the 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps optical space."

Chauhan is also enthusiastic about WiMax and other 4G technologies. These will cater to Indian users' demand for mobile access to the services and solutions they consume, and Wi-Max will be the first technology to deliver a true broadband experience wirelessly.

In terms of challenges, Chauhan sees the SMB segment going through a process of rapid growth, with businesses looking at technology to enable them to grow bigger. He is pleased that the company has a complete range of products to meet an SMB's voice, data, wireless and security requirements and says that his company's key differentiator in being successful in this segment will be support. Chauhan sees SMB customers increasingly adapting to and "I believe in hiring very good individuals, even if they take time to learn to collaborate on tasks as a team. My policy is to give them all the resources they need to accomplish a task and the freedom to innovate and deliver the best. I am a strong advocate of employee empowerment."  adopting IP telephony. There has been a distinct shift from viewing IP telephony as a "nice-to-have" to a "must-have" solution.

Going forward, Chauhan envisages growth in carrier Ethernet as well. Carrier Ethernet builds on the capabilities of the Ethernet technology that has been deployed in enterprise local area networks for over two decades. "We have invested in a number of technologies to extend the capabilities of Ethernet to transform it into a true carrier-class technology," he says.

Before taking on his current position, Chauhan was vice-president, enterprise solutions for Nortel India. Under his leadership, Nortel was able to grow the enterprise business and became a market leader in India with a string of high-profile successes. His leadership philosophy is focused on "sharing the vision" with customers, employees and all stakeholders in the organisation.

Prior to joining Nortel, he was director, markets for Asia-Pacific, Cabletron, responsible for its internet service provider, telecom and wide area networking segments across the Asia-Pacific, the key markets being Japan, China and Australia.

During the course of his decade-long career in the IT industry, Chauhan has held a number of key positions with industry leaders such as Cabletron Systems, Digital Equipment India Limited, Wipro Information Technology Limited, and Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Company.

Chauhan's many achievements have been well recognised. He received the Dataquest Award on behalf of Digital India in 1995 for being the leader in the workstation market in India.

A merit scholar through the course of his undergraduation, Chauhan completed his engineering and electronics degree from the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala in 1986. Thereafter, he went on to do a postgraduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

In India, he sees huge growth potential in creating back-end infrastructure for emergency services. Nortel has been actively involved in the implementation of 911 services in North America. It has also been instrumental in creating the telecom infrastructure for emergency services which were launched by India's non-profit Emergency Management and Research Institute.

The institute has launched the country's first "Call 108" (like the US's 911) emergency services contact system. This single number, which works across fixed line and mobile phones, empowers people in municipal areas in Andhra Pradesh such as Hyderabad, Warangal, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and others to access fire, police, medical and other emergency services.

Nortel India is also finding takers for wireless mesh networks, particularly in the education sector. Three leading educational institutions are in the process of deploying Nortel's mesh networking. "It is a secure and scalable Wi-Fi solution that delivers low-cost wireless broadband for outdoors or expansive indoor areas," he says.

Because of the low penetration rates of wireline and broadband technologies, Chauhan believes that India represents a great opportunity for Wi-Max. He says that Wi-Max will play an integral role in helping India to reach its target of 20 million subscribers by 2010.

Nortel delivers end-to-end Wi-Max solutions including devices, infrastructure, applications and services. Its solutions help improve performance and give customers the ability to connect multiple devices for every subscriber while simultaneously reducing their operational costs.

"We believe video will be the next big wave and will change the way networks are deployed. 3G networks would get exhausted if barely 6 per cent of subscribers view video. So what is needed is a technology that meets on-demand pervasive broadband requirements," says Chauhan.

Chauhan sees Wi-Max as the first 4G mobile broadband access technology to go commercial, transforming the network landscape. Wi-Max, with the inherent technology advantages of OFDM and multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) with its echo system, has the potential to meet the hyperconnectivity challenges. "According to our customers, 4G is all about lighting up devices, like portable game systems, digital still and video cameras, DVD and MP3 players, diagnostic devices and navigation systems, and devices you probably don't think about linking wirelessly to the internet today."

For enterprises, unified communications (the convergence of telephony and desktop applications) is delivering productivity gains, cost savings and a simplified user experience across multiple fixed and mobile devices.

According to him, Nortel's key strength is its customer focus. It provides a single point of contact for all network services and solutions for both service providers and enterprises. It also possesses depth of experience across all technologies to help customers achieve their business objectives quickly and cost effectively.

"Nortel's customers are responding. Important customer wins in India, like the Mumbai international airport, represent long-term partnerships between us and our customers," he says.

Chauhan intends to build on this and leverage the company's key strengths.