Srinivasan S., Founder and Director, VIVA Communications Pvt. Ltd

1. Make VoIP a basic telephony in the country since the technology is matured. If it is made the basic telephony in India, many new service providers would enter this space and the QoS (Quality of Service) would improve. This will also benefit rural telephony and would contribute in increasing its penetration.
2. Reduce customs and excise duty for import of IP communications equipments that would promote the growth of digital infrastructure in the country, making it more affordable. Government should give high priority to develop the country’s digital infrastructure as this can help overcome the shortcomings that we have in our current physical infrastructure.
3. Video conferencing expenses for companies, particularly SMEs should be allowed as tax subsidy. Video conferencing is a technology that contributes in reducing carbon emissions and promotes the green initiatives of an organization by eliminating or reducing the travel. Thus, it helps an organization to rely on geographically dispersed teams, global supply chains, remote experts and provides immediate access to critical data, by bringing them all together without everyone actually being present in the same place/room.
4. Government should allow and encourage banks to grant more leverage in financing SMEs. This is the sector that would play an important role in increasing the employment opportunities, contribute significantly to the growth of GDP of the country and contribute towards the stability of market forces.
5. Government should allocate certain percentage or quota of the government projects to the SMEs or local businesses. This would encourage entrepreneurship, provide the much needed boost to this segment and would steer them further towards the road to recovery from the global slowdown.

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Brief profile of Srinivasan S.
Srinivasan S. is a successful serial entrepreneur who started businesses in telecommunication, healthcare, hospitality and IT consulting segments from scratch and added immense value in scaling them. Apart from VIVA Communications, Srinivasan’s current portfolio includes investment in a chain of restaurants, healthcare distribution in India, an IT company in the UK in the healthcare IT and data warehousing space, with the group turnover for the same period being US $5 million. He has a Masters degree in investment management from CASS Business School, London and completed his Bachelor’s from Loyola College, Chennai.