Electronics Era: Let’s start with the brief about Frog Cellsat. Its working culture and flash some lights over the achievement/success story?
Pankaj Gandhi: Frog Cellsat Ltd is one of the leading manufacturers of RF Equipment headquartered in India. Over its approximate 19 years of history, most of the tier-1 team has been with the company for >10 years. The open and transparent work culture at Frog Cellsat Ltd makes people here passionate about developing and delivering world-class coverage as well as capacity enhancement solutions and services for next-generation wireless and mobile broadband networks.
Electronics Era: How are Frog Cellsat’s products differentiated in this competitive market of RF Equipment Manufactures?
Pankaj Gandhi: Our end-to-end RF enhancement solutions are positioned in the industry for being price competitive, field-proven, future-ready, and highly reliable. Our design, development, manufacturing, and quality control processes are ISO 9001:2015 certified. Our success is an outcome of a strategic focus on innovative R&D, to produce a unique range of RF products conforming to the applicable standards from ETSI, 3GPP, TEC, and other standardization bodies.
Electronics Era: Give a couple of examples from your catalog or products under development that highlights your capabilities?
Pankaj Gandhi: Over the past 3 years, Frog Cellsat has increased the product offering from a total of 9 to a total >20 as of date. Now we are at a platform where we look forward to exponential growth. While I’m not able to divulge more details, we are working to organically grow both our industry horizontal and vertical product offerings across telecom, defense, automotive, and enterprise segments. We are also looking at EMS manufacturing under our PLI approval.
Electronics Era: Which markets or products hold the best growth opportunities for Frog Cellsat?
Pankaj Gandhi: As I said, being a listed company, we can’t share many details ahead of time. But what I can share is that now we are attempting higher unit value and large volume product offerings (as I call them ‘big ticket items’) that will potentially unlock growth accelerators for Frog Cellsat Ltd. Many technology partnerships and technology transfer discussions are at matured stage with reputed companies from UK, Israel, Singapore, USA, Netherlands, and others. We are all set to catapult from our newly owned 1.6 Lakh sqft industrial building at Noida Sec-80.
Electronics Era: How do you see the industry 4.0 Challenges and solutions for the digital transformation and use of exponential technologies?
Pankaj Gandhi: Industry 4.0 has already started to revolutionize the way companies manufacture and distribute products. It is about integrating telecom with the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and analytics, AI, and machine learning into production operations. We already see industry 4.0 evolving around us in our day-to-day lives but we do not realize like smart metering, quick delivery e-commerce, remote education and healthcare, etc. At the back-end enabler is the integration of various telecom and IT technologies.
If you talk about true industry 4.0 in the core of manufacturing, it’s happening but we are still far away from unlocking true potential.
Electronics Era: How do you see PM Modi’s Bharat 6G Vision till 2030? According to you how can we achieve this milestone? What are the challenges in this mission and what steps should Govt. take to achieve this any suggestions?
Pankaj Gandhi: Our respected Prime Minister is a man with a vision. I feel proud of the way he is pushing for India to take leadership on the digital technology front and the policies rolled out to support Indian-owned and made-in-India telecom equipment.
As I see, the definition of 6G is not fixed yet. My personal thought is that 6G is more about marrying terrestrial networks (as we know them as 2G, 4G, 5G, and landlines) with satellite communications for direct peer-to-peer linkages.
The Department of Telecommunications has already constituted a Technology Innovation Group on 6G to develop Vision, Mission, and Goals for developing a roadmap and action plans for the 6G network in India.
This is the moment for India to take global leadership in defining global standardization for 6G telecom technology.
Electronics Era: Who are your targeted customers and what after-sales support does Frog Cellsat offer to its customers?
Pankaj Gandhi: Currently, Frog Cellsat is functioning in the telecom industry – both telco (operators) and non-telco (public safety like airports, metro, etc). We are present across the country with our 500+ services workforce.
While we still keep the focus on our prime industry i.e., telecom operators, as we introduce a new product portfolio (as I mentioned earlier), we are also trying to diversify to other industries where we can leverage our current platform and expertise for horizontal growth.
Electronics Era: What’s your own background and the path that led you to Frog Cellsat?
Pankaj Gandhi: I have been in the telecom industry for about 3 decades with vast experience in leadership positions at large MNCs like Siemens, CommScope, British Telecom, and ACE Technologies.
Mr. Konark Trivedi (MD and Founder) of Frog Cellsat and some of the senior staff have known me for the past many years. We have worked together on a few projects. I was much impressed by Frog Cellsat’s talented team, and focused business model to react quickly to customer needs. This has helped the company achieve great success thus far. The company has proved its resilience and agility over the last two decades.
It is now the right time to look for a ‘made in India’ approach and Frog Cellsat is an ideal platform to embark on this enthralling and promising journey.
