Desi S. Valli, executive director and chief operating officer of Net4 India Limited, believes in an “arithmetic” style of management, owing, perhaps, to his engineering background, which lays emphasis on the various processes that come together to form the final product. He explains, “I use a large number of tools to automate the processes, thus reducing the dependency factors to the minimum. This method is statistical, calculative and logical.”

That apart, several years of work experience and a strong educational background help him cope with the demands of his job and keep his head above water. Valli has a degree in electronics and communications engineering and an MBA in marketing management.

His initial interests lay in network design and integration. He started his career as a network engineer in a Delhi-based startup. Later, he moved to Samtech Engineering as head of its integration division and was responsible for designing, executing and maintaining its clients’ diverse networks.

However, his heart lay in the internet space. He got a chance to work in the industry when he joined hands with Net4 India founder Jasjit Sawhney. Initially, he looked after the networking business but his responsibilities grew steadily and he was eventually responsible for overseeing different business verticals. In his current position, he is responsible for business development, product development and revenues.

Valli counts his current stint as his most memorable assignment. “When I met Jasjit in 1999,” he recalls, “he gave me a brief overview of his plans to start the company and asked if I had any questions. I merely asked him the name of the company, to which he replied that it was yet to be decided. It has been a very exciting journey since then. We moved up the ladder slowly but steadily.”

Going forward, he says the biggest task before the company is to design a technical solution to meet the likely future infrastructure requirements without impacting operators’ returns on investments. “The focus will be more on shared services in the future,” he notes. “An increasing number of IT tools and facilities will be delivered as a service. This may be referred to as the cloud, as per the market trend. In all, the challenges are to deploy the available resources according to demand ratios.”

Outside of work, Valli enjoys painting. He also plays several musical instruments and likes to listen to music by A.R. Rahman, Illayaraja and Harris Jeyaraj. His favourite movies include Three Idiots in Hindi, Vaanam in Tamil and Kung Fu Panda in English. He also enjoys reading, one of his recent favourites being We Are Like That Only by Rama Bijapurkar.