Kicking Off the Annual Strategy Review: Your Voice Matters

Amitabh has over four decades of corporate and non-profit work experience of which for nearly three decades he has held senior management positions in the telecommunications industry, as well as leadership positions at various non-profit Internet and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He has worked throughout his career in voluntary capacities, gaining leadership experience in the networking, domain name system, IP addressing and ICT4D spaces.

During mid 1990’s and early 2000’s, Amitabh served as Senior Vice President and Group Head of Corporate Affairs at GTL Limited, a Network Infrastructure company, where amongst other things, he was involved in helping build some of the first privately run Data Networks in India to provide Email/Electronic Data Interchange services. Prior to this in mid 1980’s, Amitabh was involved in introducing computers in several government and public sector organizations.

In 1994-95, Amitabh cofounded and was Secretary and President of the ISP Association of India, where amongst other initiatives, he helped draft and adopt key Internet policy and licensing terms which shaped India’s acceptance of principles surrounding an open and free Internet. He was also the ISP sector’s key spokesperson for nearly a decade and represented the sector throughout industry and the media.

Amitabh conceived and founded the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) in collaboration with the Government of India. Under his stewardship, as Founder and CEO, NIXI set critical Internet infrastructure projects, including the first Internet exchanges across the country. In addition, he was instrumental in leading the successful relaunch of the .IN ccTLD Registry and setting up India’s first root instances between 2003 and 2005.

Amitabh helped train and build local capacity to enable India’s initial engagements with regional Internet organizations, and worked with the government to enable hosting of the first APNIC, IGF and ICANN public meetings in India.

For eight years, Amitabh served as a Board member of Public Internet Registry (PIR) that manages .ORG, serving as Board Secretary for five of those years. While on the PIR Board, he was very active in PIR’s introduction of new top-level domains.

Amitabh has a demonstrated track record in advocacy, policy and regulatory development work, corporate management, board governance, marketing and business development, industry-government liaison, project work, startups in Solar, Disaster Management and Power sector, legal and compliance work, altogether in multicultural and multilingual environments. One of his more recent memorable work endeavours was assisting the Afghan Ministry of Communications to launch their first ever IXP services (NIXA) in Kabul in 2018.

Amitabh is also currently working on an initiative to develop a technical platform to improve trust and security in the Internet, as well as leading a team to develop a standard for the Network Maturity Assessment Model at the Bureau of Indian Standards.

Amitabh has both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws Degrees, along with Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing & Sales. He is also a Certified Board Director by the Institute of Directors in India.

Amitabh was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2024. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2027.