Executive Leaders

Ashwin has been with Sasken during the last 14 years and has made immense contributions in the various teams that he has been a part of. As part of the Nortel team, he transformed from an engineer to an architect in 3G/Dual-mode protocol stacks. He has dappled with technical marketing for the Products Division before moving on to the Portfolio team for Sasken’s Feature Phones offering. Besides, he has had a productive stint as a Business Manager for STE and IMC. Prior to Sasken, Ashwin claims to have spent a year, soul-searching and parallely working with TI.

Ashwin holds a BE in CS from SJCE, Mysore and a Masters in CS from Mumbai. In his spare time, he enjoys watching movies and critiquing them. Besides, Ashwin travels every time he has an opportunity.

Arun Rao heads the Semiconductor and North American Operator Business at Sasken and has held this responsibility since April, 2011.  He joined Sasken in March, 2010 and was VP, Finance & Strategic Planning until he moved into this current role. 

Arun brings over 17 years of work experience, 11 of those at Intel Corporation where he served in a variety of roles.  His most recent role at Intel lasting 3.5 years, was as the Intel Seconded Assistant CFO at Intel Micron Flash Technologies (a joint venture of Intel and Micron Technology), prior to which he was the Expatriate India Operations Finance Controller for about 3 years.   He holds a B Tech from IIT, Madras and an MBA in Strategy & Finance from The Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. He also holds an MS from the State University of New York.

Outside of his work space, Arun enjoys traveling, reading and spending time with his kids and family.

Ashok Bhaskar is VP and GM for Networks, Satellite and Government, where the key challenge is defining and implementing a realizable growth strategy.

Ashok joined Sasken in Feb 2005 in the Nortel Enterprise team, and since then has held various engineering delivery roles before taking on the business line role. Prior to joining Sasken, Ashok worked in the US for about 15 years in various areas. Vehicle propulsion, storage and data networking to name a few; and about 5 years in India with CMC, PSI Data and WTI.

Ashok completed his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and BE (Hons) from BITS Pilani in Electrical and Electronics engineering.

Outside of his work space, Ashok is often found reading, listening to music and avoiding exercise.

 

Hannu Jyrkkä
VP, Delivery, Capability & Resourcing, Europe

Hannu began his career as a teacher in telecommunications at the Technical School of Salo in 1986. A year after, he moved on to contributing at Nokia on several positions from design engineer to R&D team leader. Since 1992 Hannu has worked for Botnia Hightech and in 1996 he was appointed the CEO of Botnia Hightech. Later in 2006, when Sasken acquired Botnia, Hannu was chosen to be Director, Business Development, Sasken Finland.

A few of Hannu’s numerous achievements include being awarded the

• Entrepreneur of the year in Kaustinen, Botnia Hightech Oy in 2001
• Golden Key Award of Trade and Commerce Ministry of Finland in 2001
• Managing Director of the Year Award (Managing Director Academy) 2002

Hannu holds a B.Sc. (EE) from the Polytechnic School of Oulu and an MBA from the University of Jyväskylä. In his spare time, he enjoys playing saxophone and piano; fitness sports and home activities with his wife and three children.

Nagamani brings in a wealth of over 25 years of experience in the software industry in telecom and embedded technologies, having held strategic roles ranging from business development, customer delivery management and business solutions for global customers.

Prior to this, she was Head of Business Development at Wipro for the Mobile and Consumer Electronics, Semiconductors/DSP and Gaming business development. She has been responsible for the growth in software engineering in mobile, setup-box/DTV and infotainment systems of global customers. Nagamani has handled the Android solutions and competency across Product Engineering Services group in Wipro. She has also driven the automotive business by over 30% year-on-year. Her stint at Texas Instruments prior to joining Wipro has given her a deep understanding of Semiconductor technology and an exposure to global market.

Nagamani holds an Electronics and Communication Engineering degree from Mysore University; she was shortlisted as one of the top 4 finalists for the Stevie Awards 2009 in the Best Asian Executive – Women’s Category. In her spare time, Nagamani enjoys reading books and playing chess.

Rajesh Maniar is responsible for the set-up of the Business Finance function. His focus lies in financial structuring of new deals, wins, and management of costs. Rajesh leads the Business Finance function for Sasken. Rajesh also represents Legal and FMS functions in SLT.

Rajesh has over 20 years of experience having worked with Arthur Andersen, Barclays, and Torrent Pharma, prior to joining Sasken. He has been involved in various facets of finance, including taxation, treasury, accounting, costing, investor relationship, and financial planning and analysis.

Rajesh obtained his Bachelors’ degree in Commerce from Narsee Monjee College, Mumbai. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has cleared qualification tests at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Colorado, USA.

Outside of workspace, Rajesh enjoys reading and works on improving his skills in swimming, table tennis and squash.

Rajesh began his career in 1992 in Infosys Technologies Ltd. He had a very successful 17 year stint there. As the business unit head of ERP-SAP while at Infosys, his responsibilities included strategy & business planning for the unit, financial planning & budgeting, marketing, sales & pre-sales, delivery, competence development and people management.

A few of his achievements at Infosys include:

• Being 1 out of about 40 executives amongst 120,000+ employees in Infosys selected by the Board as constituting their Tier-1 Leadership
• Growing the ERP-SAP unit from 7 Million USD in 2002-03 to over 320 Million USD in 2009-10. During this time the unit grew from having about 150 people to about 4200
• Making the ERP-SAP a ‘Leader in the SAP services’ space as per analysts such as Forester

Rajesh’s most recent stint was with the Govt of Andhra Pradesh, Ministry of Rural Development, as IT Advisor. Rajesh holds a B Tech from IIT, Madras and a Masters in Industrial Engineering from University of Alabama, US. In his spare time, he enjoys reading fiction and non-Fiction, sketching and racquet sports (tennis and badminton).

Ramesh is into his 20th year of experience in HR. The last 15 of which have been spent in the IT industry in India, before the time companies had their URLs to the time they are creating their own social networks. He has rich experience in creating and implementing HR frameworks that help organizations transition through periods of growth and change.

At Sasken, as Vice President ( HR) Ramesh is responsible for creating an employee and leadership proposition to support Sasken become an employer of choice . He is also responsible for creating and executing a talent management strategy, spanning talent acquisition, development and engagement. ( Or at least that is the idea)
Prior to joining Sasken, he was the country HR Head at CA India Technologies limited. During his tenure at CA, he managed the HR for the India Technology Center as well as India sales. He was also on the executive committee for National HRD Network in Hyderabad.

His longest stint of 10+ years had been with Infosys Technologies in varying roles across the HR spectrum, including HR strategy, internal communications and HR consulting. At Infosys, he managed the organization transformation to a high performance work ethic and a role based HR framework. He led the team which successfully positioned Infosys strengths in Best Workplace surveys.

Ramesh completed his Masters in Personnel Management from XLRI Jamshedpur and his Bachelors in EEE from REC Calicut. (Now, NIT Kozhikode)

Ramesh likes to spend time reading up and watching travel shows and travel when time permits. As a Retired college level cricketer, Ramesh stays an avid Team India fan and contributors to the blogs on the sport.

Ramaraj joined Sasken in 2007 as a business Unit Head of Nortel BU and currently heads the Independent Software Vendors (ISV) Business Line.

He began his career in 1988 writing Compilers for Intel-x86 based machines in Wipro R&D. Subsequently, he joined Motorola India as part of the India operations core team. Motorola India was the first company in India to get SEI Level 5 certification. At Motorola, he had served in India and Singapore where he was in charge of CDMA RAN and Core Network product development. Nearly 10 years later,  he co-founded the Communications Technology Division of Mascon Global Limited, where he built a team of over 400 engineers in Bangalore. At Mascon, his team was developing products in the areas of Wireline and Wireless Data Network, High Availability Middleware, In-memory Databases, Mobile Handset Applications, Unified Communications, Roaming Gateway and Value added Services.

Ramaraj has a Masters degree in Management of Technology from the National University of Singapore.  

 

Srinivas joined Sasken in March 1995. He currently heads Mobility, Automotive and Consumer Electronics Business Lines (MACE).

He has worked in a variety of roles in the last 17 years that he has been with Sasken. Most recently, Srinivas was responsible for the software accounts in the semiconductor business line. Prior to that, he was an integral part of the team that delivered the IsatPhone Pro for Inmarsat, making Sasken the first Indian company to deliver a global satellite mobile phone.

Srinivas holds a PGDBA from Symbiosis and an advanced Masters from IIM-Bangalore. Outside of workspace he enjoys travelling, chess and is nurturing his love for music by learning to play the violin. 

T.K Srikanth has been with Sasken since March 2001. He currently heads Portfolio. He has played a variety of roles here, including engineering, product/offering management and business management, especially in the handset and related areas.

Srikanth has over 24 years of experience in the software industry. Prior to joining Sasken, he was involved in engineering and scientific software development in the US and then in India. He holds a B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT-Madras and a Ph. D. in Computer Science from Cornell University, during which time he also published a number of papers in leading technical journals.

In his spare time, Srikanth enjoys reading, sports and spending time with his family.