OnMobile head is 'DQ Pathbreaker of the Year'

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Arvind Rao, chairman, CEO and co-founder, OnMobile, was on Thursday awarded the prestigious Dataquest ‘Pathbreaker of the Year 2009’ award in recognition of his contribution in the field of telecom and infotech, in creating the biggest telecom VAS company in India.

The company has done innovative work in voice portals and grew both organically and inorganically. Under the leadership of Rao the company created, retained and maintained a great team and achieved global scale, touching a billion consumers worldwide, and breaking a path for others to follow.

“IT stalwarts like Wipro and Infosys have brought India on global map as best IT services destination. We want to bring India on global map as best IT products destination,” said Rao, after receiving the award.

OnMobile's services has touched a billion customers through global brands like Orange, AT&T, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Wanadoo, Turkcell in 30 markets, competing successfully with much larger MNC companies. It has been at the center of India's mobile VAS industry that has today grown to Rs. 10,000 crore with innovative products, business models, technology and partnerships.

As per OnMobile website, prior to co-founding OnMobile, Rao was the managing director of Technology investments at Gilbert Global Equity Partners, New York. Before that, he was a principal with the Chatterjee Group, an affiliate of Soros Fund Management. During these years, Arvind led private equity, venture capital and strategic public investments in wireless telecommunications, Internet, satellites, application software and IT services worldwide.

Earlier, while at McKinsey & Co, Arvind specialized in the IT, telecom and electronics sector, providing strategic counsel to high-tech clients on new business entry and development strategies, acquisitions, alliances, product marketing and distribution strategies.