Published on December 02, 2023
Did you know that the satellite connectivity of every single international flight in the Indian airspace is powered by Nelco? Besides enjoying a 100% market share in the aviation satellite communication (satcom) sector, the Tata company commands a staggering 80% share of the maritime and the oil & gas sectors, while fulfilling the phenomenal responsibility of providing connectivity to 60% of the ATMs across the length and breadth of the country.
These and other fascinating facts about Nelco were highlighted in the Leadership Series Edge webinar addressed by P J Nath, MD & CEO, Nelco, on November 29, 2023. Speaking on the theme of ‘Building Ingrains for Sustained Business Leadership’ through the success stories of Nelco, the Tata Group’s senior leader and industry stalwart amplified the company’s success mantra while acknowledging the importance of imbibing best practices and enabling continuous improvement for sustained excellence.
“Nelco’s unmatched position in the Indian satcom sector is primarily the result of the company’s foresight to become a first-mover in building leadership in new areas during the early years and proactively building enablers for transformation over the years,” said Mr Nath.
Leading from the front
Creating new infrastructure, driving changes, restructuring businesses and scripting turnarounds, Mr Nath has been instrumental in transforming Nelco from a multi-discipline organisation to India’s leading satcom service provider. “Our purpose is to bring the benefits of India’s digital revolution to the unserved and under-served customers, and our vision is to be the most customer-centric digital solutions provider using satellite communications to benefit businesses and consumers,” said Mr Nath. Besides being the market leader in core sectors, Nelco caters to segments as diverse as offshore energy, renewables, education, disaster management, defense, rural connectivity and cellular backhaul. “Satcom industry plays a key role in providing seamless ubiquitous connectivity even across the remotest corners of the country, impacting lives and businesses where it matters most,” said Mr Nath, adding that the company operates from four teleports across India with its best-in-industry infrastructure.
Even as the satcom industry is at an inflection point, the company is ably poised to decipher the emerging trends and chart its path towards future growth. From increased global investment in space infra and India’s emergence as a growth centre, to evolution of newer technologies and business models that are driving exponential growth, the satcom landscape is witnessing a rapid change, and Nelco is at the forefront of this progression. “Mindful of the risk factors like turbulent market conditions, uncertainties, novelty and ambiguity, we continuously realign ourselves to build resilience in terms of market segments and product portfolio,” said Mr Nath.
Partners in progress
As much as it was the organisation’s vision to identify growth segments and early mover advantage in building leadership, Nelco’s strategic partnerships also have a key role in its stellar performance. From airlines and maritime companies, to partnerships with global technology platform players, the company has nurtured solid global partnerships to build market access as well as multi-brand and multi-orbital services. “Proactively building partnerships and maintaining them is our core strength. For instance, in the in-flight communication segment, we entered partnerships back in 2015 – a good four years before the regulatory approvals came in 2019, which enabled us to launch our services immediately and consolidate the market,” Mr Nath revealed.
In fact, some of the company’s partners are competitors globally, but they work cohesively with Nelco in India, thanks to the trust it has built over the years. “Some of our partnerships are for more than 15 years now. It is this sustained high-touch engagement with the global satcom ecosystem over the years that has enabled us to offer a technology agnostic play,” Mr Nath said.
Customer focused
Even as excelling in existing technologies and working with future technologies has been Nelco’s forte, the company is equally focused on customer needs. From offering services in various satellite spectrum bands, orbits and technologies, to developing bespoke solutions for different segments and applications, Nelco works closely not only with its customers but also its customer’s customers. “While we started off as pure-play connectivity providers, we have ring-fenced customers by offering additional service layers; customer centricity has helped us to sustain the market-share,” Mr Nath said, adding that Nelco constantly aims to address latent and emerging needs of the customers, and delivers on time, every time.
Culture of excellence
While Nelco already enjoys a dominant position in many domains, the company is continuously scanning large growth opportunities for satcom in India to build the next set of leadership segments. From new opportunities in the exponentially growing existing sectors like aviation and maritime, to new prospects in sectors like connected cars, telemedicine, connected rail, fleet management and disaster response – the potential is tremendous. To effectively capitalise on the new opportunities, Nelco has undertaken a three-phase continuous improvement programme — Enhance-a-thon — to strengthen its competitiveness and sharpen its edge.
The umbrella programme, conceived in collaboration with TBExG, drives improvement projects at the organisational level. “Enhance-a-thon is a mix of externally mentored and internal projects, with a formal team structure, consolidated monthly governance and a reward & recognition programme,” said Mr Nath. While Phase 1 entailed seven strategic projects with 22% employee participation, Phase 2 which is currently underway, encompasses 18 projects across strategy, process improvement and KPI improvement with 45% employee participation. “We have already witnessed significant impact on operational KPIs like logistics cost, hub uptime, support cost, etc. and we expect to yield notably more efficiencies by next year, which in turn will lead to better profitability,” Mr Nath revealed, adding that as many as eight best practices from 11 group companies have been customised and implemented. Phase-3.0, planned for Q4FY24, will have larger employee participation and will also include data & analytics projects. “This programme is helping us to achieve operational excellence and improving our speed of execution, while building momentum and competencies through continuous improvement — just the initiative we need to be future-ready,” shared Mr Nath with the audience.