US-based telecom gear maker Infinera ropes in Vikram Anand to head India operations

Anand previously worked in various roles with companies like Ericsson, and Cisco.

US-based telecom equipment maker Infinera has appointed Vikram Anand to lead the Indian operations along with the subcontinent region to drive growth amid rapid data growth in the country.

Anand, who most recently served another US-based telecom vendor, Ciena, as the senior director of sales, will look after Infinera's growth in areas like hyper scalers, data centres, and 5G transport network modernisation in the country, sources familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol.

He will look after growing Infinera's customer base in India by adding more prominent company names.

Anand previously worked in various roles with companies like VMware, Ericsson, and Cisco.

A query sent to Infinera didn't elicit any response.

Infinera is aggressively expanding its research and development (R&D) presence in India by hiring more engineers to support its business, which has been growing due to demand from fiberisation by telecom operators, data centres and subsea landing cable expansion, the company's chief executive David Heard said last year.

Hyperscalers are large cloud service providers that can provide services such as computing and storage at an enterprise scale.

Around 30 percent of the company's global R&D workforce, or over 1000 employees, are based in Bengaluru, India.

In Asia, Infinera's most important market is India which is expected to contribute over 10% towards its global revenues.

Infinera's global customers, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other large-scale web scalars, are coming to India.

The rampant growth in sub-sea cable landing and data centre expansion has also increased the US-based company's growth in India in the last two years.

Infinera has gained momentum in India in the last two years with new contract wins in the submarine cable data centres interconnect (DCI) domain.

Infinera currently manufactures its telecom equipment in Thailand while it makes its own "compound" semiconductors in the US. It will consider manufacturing its equipment in India if its business grows in coming quarters, the top executive previously told Indian media.