Anand Chari
Roti, kapda, makaan. Sure! But for the millennials, there is also Internet. With superfast broadband at home and 4G networks on our phones, not being connected to the World Wide Web is an alien concept to the younger generations. That is until they get on an airplane and find that they have to spend the next few hours without being able to upload their selfies and using Twitter. There are companies trying to change that and Gogo is the biggest of them all. This in-flight Internet-provider connects over 2,000 commercial aircraft on American Airlines and Japan Airlines and is available on more than 6,000 business aircraft.
The man making all of this possible is the Chief Technology Officer of Gogo, Anand Chari. Anand has a BS in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy; an MS in Computer Engineering from the Iowa State University; and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Over a long career, he worked at some of the biggest names in the telecommunication industry like Telephone and Data Systems (TDS) and ISCO International. Since 2006 when WiFI took off as a must-have technology, he has been at Gogo, first as a Vice President of engineering of the business aviation part of the company and then as an Executive Vice President and the Chief Technology Officer rolling out the technology over more commercial aircraft.