Bala Kumar

Bala comes with an accomplished track record as a high impact telecom market maker and thought leader. With a collective experience of close to two and a half decades across multiple system integrators, he emanates a brand of leadership through client centricity, passion for the domain and empathy.

Bala has incubated and scaled up multi-million-dollar telecom practices through breakthrough programs, namely, Digital Marketing platforms for Telcos at Tech Mahindra (Philippines), Cable/Satellite practice & Telecom Innovation Hub at TCS across various global markets, including USA, Malaysia and India. Most recently he was heading global telecommunications consulting at L&T group, driving telecom growth through a unique telecom as a vertical as well as horizontal model. A few highlights, during this stint include,
unveiling his brainchild - a unique, accessible, and affordable 5G Smart Farming product, in the presence of the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi with partners Airtel & CDAC, and
shaping up and delivering the first private enterprise 4G LTE network, and the first private enterprise 5G network in the India market (for manufacturers) , with multiple Industry 4.0 use cases realized on top of it

Bala is currently heading Industry Solutions Group for Telecom, Media and Technology at Cognizant. He is keen contributor to TM Forum, and remains to be a humble torch bearer of driving domain disruptive solutions for CSPs, particular in the growth led through network transformation.
He is also an internationally acclaimed short film maker and carries a lot of passion for creative arts.