Our Chief Consultant
Dr. Sanjay Modak
Dr Sanjay Modak held senior executive positions at AT&T and Telstra before founding a successful telecommunications consulting and advisory practice.
He started his career at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. In the late 1980’s, he opened up new markets for AT&T’s products establishing sales channels in 15 countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America including Japan, Australia, India, Mexico, China and South East and North Asia.
From a base in Hong Kong, he then built up AT&T’s Asia Pacific business from nothing to over $60M in less than three years, recruiting and coaching almost 100 managers in the region. During this period, when AT&T was an almost unknown brand in Asia, he established AT&T’s flagship products as the market leader in the region.
Relationships and channels established during this period endure to this day as the successor company to AT&T’s business products division has seen revenue grow to almost $1 billion.
At Telstra, Dr Modak formulated a new international strategy, sold it to a very conservative board of directors and led its implementation by entering newly deregulating markets in India, Indonesia and Vietnam. During this period, he was also responsible for helping to change Telstra’s international division’s culture to that of a more competitive entity.
He then moved to India as President and Regional CEO of Telstra’s Asian ventures that included mobile and satellite joint ventures in India, Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan. These were suffering from poor management, aborted start-ups, hostile partners and politicized environments. In 18 months, Dr Modak brought this portfolio to profitability by managing at both the board and operational levels.
Since 1998 and the founding of Pulse Media, Dr Modak has served clients from Paraguay to Japan, providing critical strategic advice, helping formulate business plans and by working from within and outside client firms to optimize client performance.
In 2001-03, Dr Modak led the efforts of a major Asian client to secure a brand new mobile licence in Indonesia. He lobbied the government extensively, finally swaying decision makers with a White Paper that made the case for reallocating frequency for a new operator. He then coordinated the bid document and won the licence against 6 other international bidding consortia.
More recently, Dr Modak has advised clients for the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) – the world’s largest expert network. As a GLG Leader (top 5% of GLG consultants), Dr Modak has provided market intelligence and advice to clients such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bain Capital and a host of investment funds with financial interests in the telecommunications sector in Asia and beyond.
Dr Modak has a BSc in Statistics from Elphinstone College, Bombay and MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Notre Dame.