Born and brought up in the UK, Mohammad Chowdhury learnt to adjust to people from different walks of life at a very young age. “Growing up in a country that did not have too many Asian people at the time was challenging, but it gave me the ability to cope with every situation and adjust to every surrounding. At the same time, my parents wanted us to keep in touch with our Bangladeshi roots. So, I know how to read and write Bengali,” he says.

His exposure to diverse cultures and environments helped him during his frequent travels across the globe. (He has worked in 66 countries and lived in six.) “Almost all my assignments have taken me to unusual places around the world,” he says. He recalls two incidents in particular. “I was in Kazakhstan when the war with the US broke out,” he says. “It was minus 25 degrees there, with no heating and food. We used to carry food in suitcases from London. It was in these circumstances that I arrived to establish PwC’s first office in that country.”

He recalls another memorable incident that took place in Ethiopia in early 2000, at the time of the Sydney Olympics. “I was sitting in the office of the manager of a major telecom company when a live TV broadcast showed an Ethiopian runner winning the gold medal,” he recounts. “The whole country exploded with joy. It was truly exciting.”

Chowdhury has 20 years of experience, mainly in the telecom, IT and technology sectors. Aside from PwC, he has worked with companies like IBM and the Vodafone Group. At PwC, he led the company’s telecom restructuring and privatisation business out of London.

Today, as partner and telecoms industry leader at PwC India, Chowdhury is upbeat about the many opportunities the country presents and seems geared up to navigate the complexities of the telecom sector. “I look forward to building our business here and infusing fresh thinking in the industry,” he says.

Having recently moved from the UK to Mumbai, he is still finding his sea legs, though he likes the city very much. “Mumbai is one of my favourite cities in the world (the others are Rome and Cairo). Mumbai is a varied and vibrant city while Rome is romantic and Cairo, fascinating,” he says.

Chowdhury read politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, obtained an M.Phil in economics at Cambridge and underwent executive training at Harvard Business School.

In the UK, he was a television programme presenter and was active in several charities. A published author, Chowdhury enjoys creative and travel writing. He is also a keen photographer and a language whiz – he speaks no less than seven languages.