In 2013, Ardom Telecom ranked first in the Deloitte Tech Fast 50 India in light of its outstanding growth in the TMT industry. Thanks to its reliable and state of the art offering including preventive and breakdown maintenance, Ardom has achieved excellent results with its wide array of top clients from the Indian telecom industry, including Indus Towers, Bharti Infratel, American Tower and Viom Networks.
In this exclusive interview, Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer at Ardom Telecom shares his views on what it takes to become a leading O&M provider in India, the shift towards green powered sites and renewable energy and how to overcome challenges such as diesel theft.
TowerXchange: Please tell us about Ardom Telecom’s activities and footprint
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
Ardom Telecom offers end to end maintenance services to active and passive equipment as well as Optical Fibre Cables (OFC). We are a team of experienced professionals bonded by a set of common values and a passion for our job. In fact, the word Ardom comes from the idea of a team of ardent O&M professionals (hence the combination of the letters ARD and OM) and we have been striving to carve out a niche in a disorganised and fragmented market such as telecom infrastructure O&M in India.
Starting from the state of Bihar, in three years we have grown to serve nine telecom circles including Bihar and Jharkhand, Delhi and NCR, Haryana, MP and Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, UP-East and UP-West. In terms of its footprint, Ardom covers almost 40% of India’s geographical area and almost 50% of its population.
TowerXchange: Can you share who your key clients are and the type of services you offer them?
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
Our key clients are American Tower India, Alcatel Lucent, Bharti Infratel, Duraline, Ericsson, Indus Towers, Reliance Jio, Samsung, TowerVision India and Viom Networks. Ardom serves a combined 11,500 towers and approximately 18,000 Km of OFC. In addition, we are also involved in laying OFC in the country.
Our business philosophy is to provide single window managed service solutions to our customers. Our service package to Indian towercos includes complete site management and allows companies to keep track of each telecom site under a fixed energy consumption model, energy audit, comprehensive and non-comprehensive O&M, the laying of OFC and its O&M, first level maintenance of active components, remote monitoring through real time data, site health surveys and more.
TowerXchange: What is the current scale and potential growth of the Indian telecom tower industry?
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
India is one of the largest markets in the world for telecom infrastructure O&M with 400,000 telecom sites, expected to grow to half a million over the next three years. Additionally, India is host to 700,000 BTS, with projections as high as 1 million BTS over the next two years and as much as 1 million Km of OFC which could reach 2 million Km by 2017.
Telecom operators and towercos are increasingly aware of the importance of accurate energy management as India has one of the highest ratio of mobile subscribers and per capita electricity consumption in the world. The Government of India has come up with guidelines for the implementation of renewable energy projects which are changing the dynamics of the O&M business. In fact, renewable energy solutions will increase the size of the market considerably and are now contributing to the creation of new companies specifically involved in O&M for telecom sites powered by alternative energy solutions.
Telecom operators and towercos are increasingly aware of the importance of accurate energy management as India has one of the highest ratio of mobile subscribers and per capita electricity consumption in the world
TowerXchange: Which specific services do you offer to your clients in light of the climatic conditions of India (such as monsoons)?
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
India is a vast country with different extremes of climatic conditions. At Ardom, we customise site-specific solutions taking into account all variables including the electrical load on each site, number of tenants, grid availability and its status, climatic conditions et cetera.
Ardom is able to offer state of the art solutions in light of any climatic condition and we are well aware of the necessity of preventive maintenance on specific equipment depending on the season. For example, during pre-summer site check-ups in Delhi, we pay extra attention to air conditioning systems and shelter door locks while during pre-monsoon check-ups in Odisha and Bihar, we take particular care of shelter health and the height of various equipment.
TowerXchange: How many green sites do you serve? Do you see green sites expanding in the region?
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
Ardom is involved in the conversion of traditional sites into green ones thanks to various technical solutions we are able to offer. Our Fixed Cost Model (FCM) is a much appreciated and widely adopted solution that differentiates us from other O&M players and helps our clients make considerable savings.
The Department of Telecom of the Government of India is pushing operators and towercos to covert tower sites to alternative sources of energy. This has rightly forced players to look at various options currently available in the market.
At Ardom, we have an energy consumption database of over 11,000 operational sites and we are ideally placed to design tailor-made solutions for any kind of site. Being technology-agnostic, we can source the perfect solution suitable for a particular site taking into account variables like EB availability, sunlight duration, terrain and geography by providing solutions like PV solar, Lithium-Ion batteries, biomass, hydrogen fuel cells et cetera.
TowerXchange: Is fuel theft a problem in India? What kind of solutions are available in the market?
Pankaj Sharma, Director and Chief Business Development Officer, Ardom Telecom:
The problem of diesel pilferage does exist in remote and rural areas. However, a number of solutions are now available in the market, ranging from small tracking equipment placed at the DG sets to record the actual diesel level and consumption to complete conversion of sites to alternative energy sources, therefore eliminating diesel altogether.
At Ardom, we have developed an in-house mobile application called Ardom Mobile Workforce to track and analyse real-time ground activities including diesel filling tasks performed by our field staff. Additionally, our Fixed Energy Consumption Methodology relieves our customers from all the pain points related to the calculation of exact energy costs on sites as well as diesel pilferage.
