Seasoned telecom veteran and Senior Director of Product Management Sridhar Bhaskaran shares his story, passions, his role at Rakuten Symphony and more.
Tell us about your journey to Rakuten Symphony
I come from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India. I started my professional journey in 2002 after finishing my Engineering degree in Computer Science. I was introduced to end to end product development lifecycle very early in my career. Within 6 months of joining as a fresher in a semiconductor company in 2002, we were put in the hot seat to deliver a real time diagnostic tool for DSL modem chipsets - with just a four-person team. Our scope of work not only involved developing the tool, but also to package it, write user guides and installation documents and even to design the logo of the product. After eight months of hard work, we delivered the product, and our lead asked us to go and present it in an international VLSI conference.
This experience prepared me to look at product building from a completely different perspective. It taught me to go deeper, learn things outside of my comfort zone, question everything, seek answers for those questions and never stop until it is delivered as an easy to install and use package.
I was an active contributor to 3GPP core network standards between 2013 and 2019, involved in some of the key 5G core network specifications, including serving as the rapporteur for few specifications.
With that background I was hired by Altiostar as a standards expert back in 2019 to work on 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) standards and O-RAN Alliance standards. From being a standards delegate I transitioned into a full-time product management role in Altiostar and later Rakuten Symphony.
Can you share a bit more about your current role?
In my current role as Senior Director of Product Management, I was initially handling managing customer requirements and translating them into product requirements specifications and detailed systems specifications. Earlier I was actively handling few customers, but when we realized that we needed a full time role and team to write end to end systems / feature specifications, I took up that role within the product management team. Generally, systems / feature specifications are not done as part of product management. However, we took up that role finding a gap.
Since the Open RAN ecosystem involves interoperating with multiple partners across layers, having full visibility into end-to-end solutions and how different pieces come together is very important. With my background in end-to-end product development engineering lifecycle and standards, I was able to easily fill this gap of systems engineering.
What has been the highlight of your time at Rakuten Symphony?
The plethora of challenges that Open RAN ecosystem brings and the opportunities to solve them is what that keeps me motivated. Since we have to stitch together multiple pieces of the Open RAN puzzle – getting everyone aligned on a working end-to-end solution and making sure everyone understands it irrespective of their line of expertise and skillset is a huge interpersonal challenge in this area.
My current work always keeps me on my toes to learn new things outside of my comfort zone and dig deeper to identify solutions for problems. Bringing in this solution mindset and clear communication of end-to-end processes within and across the teams inside the RAN business unit of Rakuten Symphony is one of the highlights of my time at Rakuten Symphony.
Do you have a favorite quote that inspires you?
I have always had fascination for Thirukural, a collection of 1330 couplets from Saint Thiruvalluvar in Tamil literature. If I have to pick a couple which I relate to with regards to my work, those would be:
“Whatever you learn is useless if you can’t communicate it well and make everyone understand” and “Even if you are not able to learn and read – listen from experts and learn. That will help you like how a walking stick helps in old age.”
I also like the philosophy "Best way to learn a new subject is to teach it". This approach to learning was also supported by Richard Feynman, a famous American theoretical physicist.
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What are some hobbies you enjoy pursuing in your down time?
My hobbies have changed during different phases of my life but one thing that I keep myself engaged in is active and competitive sport. In my school days and college days, I was pursuing competitive cricket, playing divisional leagues. I also experimented a bit with cycling, commuting to office everyday and doing some long-distance cycling over the weekends.
Involvement in competitive cricket from a young age, a sport where you have to stay focused for 7-8 hours a day had taught me to go through the ebbs and flows of life and approach challenges and successes with the same level-headed approach.
During my mid 30s I was travelling extensively for meetings and I took up reading, a habit I now really enjoy. I keep refreshing my books wishlist every year. Histories of human evolution, science and technology, history and Tamil stories tied to the culture of different communities are my favorites.
What’s next for you?
I am on a mission to make Open RAN easy to deploy, monitor and upgrade. The path is strewn with many challenges. Each challenge opens up as a new problem area to solve. Eager to see how far we can go and how we can empower others to come along with us on this journey.
