Farook Ruwalla

Key Responsibilities:

Led the development of the international wholesale product portfolio, roadmap, and business strategies (International Roaming, Voice, SMS, MVNO, and IoT).

- Directed international roaming and interconnect commercial negotiations with partners and carriers.

- Designed and developed international roaming and interconnect wholesale pricing, retail plans, and market offerings, effectively managing CAPEX and OPEX impact, and monitored business case performance for Thuraya.

- Negotiated agreements and pricing with carriers and service providers for Signaling, GRX, IPX, DCH, FCH, and SMS hubbing services for Thuraya.

- Established processes to handle fault resolution and fraud detection, prevention, and response.

- Tracked and managed product commercial and service performance, recommending and implementing continuous improvements (revenue enhancement and cost reduction), including product changes and upgrades.

- Collaborated with stakeholders to provide insights into sales, operations, competition, market trends, and products.

- Led campaign and customer journey analytics initiatives, optimizing based on ROI.

- Analyzed the market potential of existing services and evaluated opportunities for expansion into new markets with current and new services.

- Ensured full redundancy and high availability for high-priority links through strategic planning and coordination with the Operations Team and carriers.

- Worked with fixed and GSM networks to configure and negotiate preferred termination rates for worldwide interconnections.

- Oversaw the sales and promotion of Thuraya's hardware segment to MNOs and special partners, including satellite phones, maritime products, IP data products, and M2M products.

- Represented Thuraya at key industry events, such as MWC, ITW, GSMA WAS, Capacity, Carrier World Conference, and Mobile 360.

Key Achievements:

- Expanded Thuraya's roaming footprint from 60 to over 175 countries, partnering with 375+ MNOs for Voice, Data, and CAMEL roaming services.

- Grew Voice Interconnection partnerships from 6 TDM-based carriers to 15 TDM+IP-based carriers and added 5 direct partners in key countries.

- Launched SMS hubbing services with over 4 SMS hubs for both P2P and A2P SMS services.

- Collaborated with the Sales and Marketing Team to create marketing campaigns that supported sales strategy, generating new business worth USD 10 million and raising awareness of other company products.

- Secured 6 MVNO deals with MNOs from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to resell Thuraya's wholesale minutes and hardware based on the roaming service model.

- Implemented premium VAS services based on Voice and SMS, leading to a 28% increase in revenue.

- Developed channels in three regions, increasing the revenue share of channels from 39% to 58% of total regional revenue.

- Led the Pan-India rollout of National, International, and Prepaid CAMEL roaming services.

- Developed new products for inbound and outbound roamers to boost roaming penetration and revenue.

- Effectively managed budgets and allocated resources to optimize productivity and profitability.

- Set clear targets and objectives and communicated them to team members across all 15 Pan-India operations.

- Designed and launched new campaigns to increase usage among inbound and outbound roamers, coordinating detailed ATL and BTL plans with the communication team.

- Oversaw daily operations to ensure performance, quality, and service standards were met.

- Launched the AMI International roaming alliance with the top 10 MNOs from Asia.

- Developed a product roadmap to drive penetration and usage of roaming and long-distance services.

- Increased roaming revenues nearly threefold in under a year and doubled them during 2006-2007.

- Planned and executed key strategies to establish strong brand recall for Roaming and ILD Cards.

- Coordinated with roaming partners, IREG and TADIG teams, and interconnect vendors to ensure seamless roaming operations.

- Awarded the Airtel Achievers Cup for outstanding performance in boosting revenues from roaming and long-distance services in 2006-2007.

- Achieved the highest EGPRS, Voice, P2A ARPU, and CRBT metrics, reaching 29% penetration.

- Led two highly successful campaigns, "Jhumo Aur Jeeto" (nominated for EFFIES 2006) and "Classic Film Festival" (won ABBIES & EFFIES 2005).

- Received the Best Employee Award (YCMAD) three times for exceptional contributions to VAS and Roaming.

- Became the first operator to launch EGPRS technology in Gujarat and initiate GPRS roaming services with 14 domestic and 40 international partners.

- Established international GPRS roaming agreements with 40 operators across 20 countries within three months.

- Successfully developed the Corporate Sales Associates (CSA) concept, appointing three CSAs to enhance business, a first for Hutch Corporate Channel.

- Twice recognized with the Best Employee Award for outstanding sales performance and achieving targets.

- Managed over 300 large and medium-sized accounts for the enterprise business.