Meet Ranjeet Koul, the Vice President and Country Manager of APAC & MEA regions at Aeris Communications, an IoT solutions provider with over three decades of experience optimizing machine-to-machine communications.
An accomplished business leader with rich experience in sales leadership and general management roles, Ranjeet has a proven track record in managing several large and complex business units and incubating new ones. With his father being an army veteran, Ranjeet grew up in a constantly changing environment, moving around in different parts of India. This changing environment allowed him to learn new things daily. While growing up, Ranjeet got fascinated with technology and decided to build his career around it. So, to follow his love and passion for technology, he opted for engineering at BIT Bangalore, and later pursued a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Western International University, USA.
After completing his education, Ranjeet joined Modi Xerox as a Sales Manager during the late 1990s. Since then, he has worked for HP, Tata Avaya, and Intel Corporation.
Ranjeet joined Aeris Communication in 2018. As the Vice President and Country Manager of APAC & MEA regions, he manages the company’s P&L for the entire APAC region except for India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Ranjeet firmly believes that the pandemic has brought a massive digital transformation worldwide. Pre-covid technology adoption speed was very slow, and most organizations were risk averse and wanted to continue with their legacy IT systems. Only a handful of companies had dedicated Chief Information Officers OR DEDICATED Chief Digital Officers. However, with the pandemic, everything changed. As a result, advanced technologies, such as, IoT, AI and ML are becoming a reality, and they are starting to make sense for business to enterprises.
The Global Leader in IoT Connectivity Solutions
Founded in 1992, Aeris Communication is a global leader in IoT connectivity solutions with a proven track record of helping several companies unlock value through connected technologies. Thanks to its three decades of IoT knowledge and experience, Aeris empowers businesses with its intelligent IoT cellular connectivity, connected solutions & services, security, reliability, and support to simplify and streamline various IoT programs at a large scale. The organization’s connectivity solutions provide leading technologies, workflows, insights, best-in-class support, and expertise to help its clients simplify complex IoT deployment. Aeris’s solutions give businesses critical visibility into managing connected IoT operations more easily than ever. By helping its clients gain the needed control of connected IoT programs, the firm empowers them to achieve their operational goals while mitigating costly security breaches and expanding profitability at a scale.
Greatest Accomplishment
“Over the last 23 years of my professional career, there have been a lot of moments where I have got the feeling that it is my best, but the very next morning, I strive to better that best.”- said Ranjeet.
As the organization’s leader, Ranjeet put together Aeris International Solution Sales Organization and helped Aeris be recognized as one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies across APAC, which several industry experts further ratified.
Ranjeet was also recognized as a thought leader in the connected solution services and consulting domain(CMO Asia in collaboration with IoT /Cloud thought leaders Association APAC). Under his leadership, Aeris has now expanded to UAE, Africa, and Europe.
Tackling Challenges
Ranjeet understands that being a key person in this environment means much more responsibility and the ability to work on helping fellow team members across departments to achieve business goals.
He says, “Being the key member means to pause your personal ambitions and inspire team members to outperform themselves by molding yourself and getting in the middle of the action, thus leading by example.” For Ranjeet, leadership is a journey to inspire and learn from people, which adds value to him. Being a leader, he doesn’t control anything or anyone as one can do from an influential position. He believes in inspiring and directing people to achieve the best for the organization and themselves.
Failures
Like many, Ranjeet witnessed the Kashmir problem at its peak in 1989-90. At this point of time, he had to give up everything, which his father had built back in Kashmir, and rebuild everything from scratch in an entirely new place and environment.
He says, “My biggest failure in life dates back to 1989 when Kashmir was burning, and I saw all that my father had built by investing his life’s savings becoming ash, and I was completely helpless. Pain teaches you empathy but leaves you with a few choices that can decide your entire life’s journey. I chose to stand up and start all over aging as every other Kashmiri pandit did.”
Vision in Life
Aeris in India is a young and dynamic profitable company, which gives Ranjeet and his team a unique ability to reinvent their products and all-go-to-market strategy. Ranjeet strives to hire the best talents who can challenge and question the status quo and keep the lamp of innovation shining bright. Ranjeet believes our time in this world is limited, so one needs to avoid wasting it by living someone else’s life.
He says, “Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
