Vinod Vasudevan

Dr Vinod V Vasudevan is the Group CEO of Flytxt.^[1] He is responsible for driving the company’s strategic direction and overall management. Vasudevan has over 20 years of experience in software and telecommunications sector spanning across India, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America.

Throughout his career, he has been involved in the development and commercialization of innovative products and technologies, strategic consultation and planning for startup companies, technology and business planning and business development. He has led and managed several successful projects involving large scale system and network design, development and roll-out worth several hundreds of millions of dollars.

Early life

Vinod Vasudevan was born on 25 May 1967 in Changa, Kerala.^[2] He finished his B.Tec in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1988. He received his master's degree from the same institution in 1990 with a silver medal for topping the class. Four years later, he received his doctorate from the same institution in the same field. At present Dr. Vasudevan is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur.^[3]

Career

Vinod Vasudevan's first position was at IIT Kharagpur as Senior Scientific Officer from 1989 to 1993 where he worked on DRDO research and developed a system for strategic recognition from aerial images for DRDO.

After working at IIT Kharagpur, he joined Electronics Research and Development Center as a Technical Staff Member from May 1993 to November 1994. There he initiated a major multimedia healthcare project and developed a new training program compliant with DOE A level for internal and external candidates.

From November 1994 to June 1995 he worked as a project manager with Ashok Leyland.

He then went to Japan to work as a Research Scientist for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. While working as a research scientist, he invented 'Active Search Algorithm' for online multimedia database retrieval, providing a 100-1000 folds increase in efficiency. During that time he was widely acclaimed by Japanese print and television media. He also invented and filed three patents on behalf of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. His research work was acknowledged by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone with a 'Directors Award'.

He then worked as a research staff at Kent Ridge Digital Labs, a premier research institution in Singapore, focused on creating economic impact through commercially viable technology development. At present the research lab is known as A-STAR. Vasudevan filed 8 patents and established Kent Ridge Digital Labs as leading force in ISO MPEG committee. He served there for 3 years.

His next destination was in U.S when he took the position of CTO for NewsTakes.Inc California.^[4] He then returned to India in 2002 and started working as a CTO with Reliance Communications. He introduced CDMA 1 x RTT wireless data network and led the planning, design, vendor selection and engineering for GPRS/Edge data network elements and platforms. He was with Reliance Communications till November 2008.

Awards and Accomplishments

• Leadership Excellence in Telecom Business Award at the Asia Leadership Awards event in Dubai ^[5]
• IAPR-MVA, "Most influential Paper over the Decade Award" for publication of 'Visual Tracking Using Active Research for Color', 2007, Tokyo,^[6]
• IDC-Asia Pacific, Dynamic IT Award for Communications and Media Industry. March 2006 Bangkok Thailand ^[7]
• PC-Quest"Best IT Implementation Award" for R-Connect,the wireless internet solution of Reliance Inforcomm. 2004, Mumbai, India ^[8]
• "The 2000 Information Systems Society Best Paper Award" from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan ^[9]
• Two special awards from Kent Ridge Digital labs
• 'Directors Award' from NTT for co-inventing the Active Search Algorithm, 1997^[10]
• Silver medal at IIT Kharagpur in 1999 for standing at first position in Masters
• Government of India scholarship for Masters studies at IIT Kharagpur during 1988-1990
• IEEE student paper award during final year of undergraduate studies in 1988
• Jagdish Bose national science talent search scholarship during 1984-1988
• First Rank in Kerala state engineering entrance examination, India

Extra Curricular Positions Held

• Member CDG-CTO Council 2007-08
• Member of Transition Leadership Teams at Reliance Infocomm
• Member, Board of Directors, NewsTakes Inc. 2000-2002
• Chairman, MPEG Ad hoc groups on MPEG-7 standardization 1998-2000
• Member, patent review committee, KRDL, Singapore, 1998–2000
• Member, Learning Lab Coordination committee, KRDL, Singapore, 1998–1999
• Member,Singapore national MPEG delegation, 1997–2000
• Member, staff training committee, ER&DC, India, 1994
• Member, student affairs committee and student's disciplinary committee and President of hall of residence committee at IIT Kharagpur, 1987–1988

Peer Reviewed/ Invited Publications

• Publications in referred International journals, around 14
• Publications in International conferences
• Publications in Local and regional conferences 7
• Invited papers and Articles 6
• ISO Documents - authored and Edited, 7 ^[11]

Participation in Industry forum by Invitation

• 2nd IMS India 2009 International Conference. 'What is the impact of IMS on the Indian Telecom Market?'. Feb 2009, Mumbai, India
• 3rd Annual Mobile VAs Summit 2009. 'Case Study: Techniques in unlocking the potential of Mobile as a customer engagement channel'. April 2009, KualaLampur, Malaysia.
• Mobility World Congress 2009. 'Transforming the network innovative services'. December 2007. Hong Kong.
• IEEE Symposium. '3G wireless service enablers'. Nov, 2005, Bangalore India
• 3G India 2005 International Conference. 'Keynote address- 3G Drivers', Nov, 2005, Mumbai, India
• National Association of Broadcasting, USA. 'How to tag content and make the most of it'. NAB Xstream, Broadcasting on the Internet. Sep 5-7 2001, New Orleans, LA, USA.
• IBC Asia Mobile Content and Portals 2001. 'Smart content Solutions'. IBC Asia, Mobile content and portals 2001 - Profiting from Mobile Content and Portals. 9–10 July 2001 Singapore
• IEEE ICMS Conference.'MPEG-7': Its impact on research, industry and the consumer'. ICMCS 99, Florence, Italy, June 1999
• CNET, Singapore. 'The MPEG revolution is here!'. CNET Singapore, February 24, 1999
• VLVB (invited by Sharp Labs, USA). ' MPEG-7 issues'. VLBV Workshop (VLBV 98).Urbana, Illinois, USA. October 98
• Singapore MPEG Delegation. 'MPEG-7 the new standard'. The first Singapore MPEG Seminar . NTU, Singapore, June 98.

Patents and Patent Applications

• US6342904.Creating a Slide Show Presentation from Full Motion Video^[12][13]
• Japan H7-288446. Image Recognition and retrieval system
• Japan H8- 43930. Object Recognition System
• Japan H8-146857. Object Detection System
• US09/480,715,SG990810-4. A method and apparatus for converting video to multiple mark up language presentations
• PCT/SG98/00096.Method and apparatus for content linking supplemental information with time sequence data
• US09/406,444.Activity descriptor for video sequences^[14]
• US09/758,230, System and method for reducing images including graphs
• US09/886,398.System and method for adjusting bit rate and cost of delivery of digital data
• PCT/US04/03338:Mobile Telephony Application Platform. Filed in 2003

Family

Vinod is married and has two children.

References