Summit Digitel: Oct'22 Newsletter

DHANANJAY JOSHI MD & CEO, Summit Digitel

Now the future for Summit Digitel looks more promising than ever

Dear Colleagues,

Summit Digitel is at a tipping point, where we are showcasing our strengths, resilience to work and technological prowess more prominently than ever before. Even amidst the heavy monsoons, the Summit juggernaut kept rolling, clocking over 5,000 RFI deliverables in this quarter alone, while touching new milestones, including 10,000 active Service Requests, sales orders and RFI automation completions in our order management application BOOST.

The WHO Chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recently said that the end of Covid is “in sight” - this gives us confidence that our worst days are behind us, and the light at the end of the tunnel is clearly in sight. Even during the pandemic, just in two years, we have been able to heed to the call of the telecom sector at a most crucial juncture, by being able to fund, scale-up and strategically place 1.52 lakh mobile towers. Now the future for Summit Digitel looks more promising than ever, with a rejuvenated workforce, technologically sound processes, and a country that looks forward to embracing 5G in all its glory.

Another feather in our cap is our SAP implementation under Project Shikar. While Project Shikar saw the application of various functional modules in a myriad of company functions, SAP implementation will help us automate and manage business expenses, revenues, and all internal reporting requirements.

This quarter has emphasized our resilient and hardworking culture, as well as the support from our business partners and stakeholders, who have ensured that we continuously clock new levels of growth. This edition of the Summit Bulletin will give you a deeper insight and understanding of the various new implementations and how each of you have played a seminal part in our growth trajectory, for that, I am grateful and also immensely confident of the growth curve as we move forward.

INDER MEHTA Deputy CFO, Summit Digitel

The power of 5G is remarkable

After a few years of being the most touted technology to change how fast the world functions, 5G is finally here. In its initial rollout over the next two months, 5G will be introduced in 13 Indian cities, and will see a nationwide rollout in early 2023.

The power of 5G is remarkable, to say the least, as it will benefit enterprise businesses that use 5G to better their investments in cloud and Internet of Things, and use data to derive actionable insights at scale. However, what’s equally - if not more - exciting are the financial and economic aspects of the technology.

In the areas of manufacturing, energy and utilities, banking, transportation, healthcare and retail, operators will invest around Rs 1.6 trillion in their networks between 2022 and 2025. This will translate to benefitting the Indian economy by ₹36.4 trillion (or $455 billion) between 2023 and 2040, according to analysis by GSMA Intelligence.

I am proud to say that Summit Digitel has played a crucial role in enabling this rollout, by being a strong, reliable player in the telecom infrastructure space during the pandemic, by managing over 152,000 towers, a feat that is Herculean, to say the least. In another milestone, this quarter, Summit Digitel was converted into a public limited company. This will further increase our compliance to India’s laws and regulations, and bolster our investor base.

Additionally, we are one of the few young organisations that can boast of being SAP S/4 HANA integrated, which has been shown to reduce IT operational costs of companies by as much as 11-17%. This will help with automation of tedious tasks, providing accurate financial reporting and analytical insights.

Although we are a young company, our ambitions have always been sky-high, as we constantly look to grow and strengthen our partnerships. However, this is never at the cost of safety of our employees, partners, and contractors. HSSE always has been and always will be our top priority. Even though the festive season is ahead of us, we already have many reasons to celebrate, most prominent of which are the excitement and enthusiasm that each employee at Summit brings to work every day!

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The Health, Safety, Security and Environment team has had a challenging two years safely managing a telecom infrastructure company in the thick of the pandemic, and they have risen to the occasion once again. The HSSE team has successfully completed 3,15,502 man-hours of training with our O&M partners, including courses on electrical safety and road safety. 2107 man-hours of training to Functional Leaders across circles has been additionally delivered by Summit HSSE team.

This leadership training, called Project Samarth, covered over 407 infrastructure Leads, Infrastructure Engineers, and SP leadership teams in over 13 Summit Circles. Job safety planning today, through the training, has been imbibed at the field level to ensure each job is safely planned and executed.

All the 04 Summit regional and circle offices demonstrated compliance to HSSE requirements and successfully completed their HSSE HOTO process making them safe and compliant.

Other events to promote safety included: Emergency mock drill at corporate and Gujarat offices

Provisions for secondary fall protection for RTP site through a pilot project undertaken in the Gujarat circle

Release of weekly state-wise CRR (Covid Risk Rating) to enable safe and compliant business travel during COVID

Training with HOTO partner, Office design & build contractor HSE evaluation, and Preparations for BAM Safety audit

The Summit Safety program (SSP)

As part of Summit’s dedication towards HSSE, the SSP was launched back in December 2021, which actively helps employees to understand safety risks in their work and also help them learn how to mitigate them Employees who qualified for the program were issued Level 1 Safety Passports. The next steps will include Level 2 training and refresher programs which are planned in the near future.

We also had a productive collaboration with the RPPMSL circle team, with 6 joint initiatives which helped in promoting safety of field resources and a drastic reduction of fire incidents.

Proactive identification, analysis, control and mitigation of HSSE risk is integral part of our process,. In addition to being one of our greatest competitive advantages, Health and Safety are non-negotiable, and we are constantly working to improve our performance scores in all areas.

Our Safety Beliefs include

The commitment to Health, Safety, Security, and the Environment is firmly anchored in Summit Digitel’s company values.

Overview of Site Compliance

The site compliance functions at Summit have been uniquely designed. Given that most of our compliances are being managed by our partner Reliance Projects & Property Management Services Limited (RPPMSL), our role pertains to governing, reviewing, and auditing their activities to ensure that all our sites are fully compliant. The Site Compliance team has evolved in several key areas, whether it is the alignment of state tower policies with RPPMSL, the conducting of site compliance audits to ensure all compliances are obtained, ensuring RPPMSL makes all compliance documents available through SDIL’s data mart, or getting our audit queries addressed in strict time frames. To perform these activities in a streamlined manner, we have reorganized the Site Compliance Team to now also come under the purview of Audit and Legal sections. Some of the steps initiated by the team are highlighted below:

Compliance Document Access via Data Mart:

Initially, the flow of site compliance documents from the partner was not automated, and manual collation of documents restricted SDIL to audit compliances to only one site per circle. Given the large number of sites handled by SDIL, the pace of manual collation was inadequate. The need of the hour was a systemic solution that could make the audit process effective. With persistent efforts from the IT and compliance teams, the site compliance data was finally migrated to SDIL Data Mart. This in turn to migrate 99.5% of site compliance documents from RRPMSL. The data collected also allows us the opportunity to further analyse the data and derive actionable insights.

Audits:

Audit classification, partner response to queries, and query resolution with established TATs:

Resolution of audit queries was bound to increase with the rise in audit count. However, with continuous engagement and synchronization with the partner on the level of alignment regarding the applicability of Tower policies and applicable laws, we have reached middle ground on a mechanism to classify the audit queries into four categories i.e., Critical, High, Medium, and Low. While the primary focus is to get the resolution on the critical and high-risk queries within defined timelines, simultaneous focus is maintained on resolvingthe medium and low-risk observations.

Audit Review & Monitoring:

Audit documents are obtained from multiple sources. Considering the large volume of documents, an IT solution is being explored to make the audit process more effective and less time-consuming. However, in the interim, the site compliance team is focused on the development of detailed audit checklists in Microsoft Teams forms to semi-automate the data collation process and increase ease of sharing of the audit observations with the partner team for quick and timely resolutions.

Site Audits:

The journey of auditing has taken us from a mere

And this quarter started on a fabulous note as we completed 5000 sharing RFAI for Airtel in September 2022. This momentous occasion was celebrated with the Airtel’s Leadership at Gurugram’s Oberoi Hotel. Among these were milestones and celebrations in Karnataka, J&K, AP and Kerela circles.

300 RFAI with the RPPMSL team

RFAI

In the bangalore office, we celebrated 300 RFAI with the rppmsl team, while we celebrated 60 rfai in J&K. AP & Telangana circle too celebrated 400 rfai with the airtel team during this quarter. We also saw the kerala team doing 150 RFAIs and celebrating with airtel. Additionally, kerala hosted world environment day celebrations including the bsnl and airtel teams, with everybody taking a heartfelt pledge to be more environmentally friendly.

The Onam season was celebrated with much fervour by the Kerala team. Our other offices were not far behind, with Ganesh Chaturthi and Independence Day being celebrated in the Bengaluru, Pune and Karnataka offices.

On the digital front, we also recognised the growth of Summit as a brand, as we hit 3000 followers on professional social media platform Linkedin. This helps us cement our position as a frontrunner in the industry.

Back in Delhi, Airtel Delhi recognised two Summitians for their endeavours and issued appreciation certificates to our RSM North-1, Shruti Arora, and Delhi CAM Gagan Kumar.

We also welcomed the new CTO of Airtel Upper North, who oversaw and recognised the hard work put in by the team for critical site deliveries in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Apart from Airtel’s Corporate Leadership Team, we also received video appreciations from Airtel Rajasthan’s CEO, Nidhi Lauria, Airtel’s Delhi CTO, Vikas Showkeen, and the CTOs of Bihar and West Bengal, Saurabh Shrivastava and Rohit Jain respectively.

In terms of organic expansion, the East Regional office was inaugurated in Kolkata with the Airtel Leadership team invited to the office for the lighting of the lamp ceremony.

In terms of organic expansion, the North Regional office opened its doors in the Delhi NCR region, while the East Regional office was inaugurated in Kolkata with the Airtel Leadership team invited to the office for the lighting of the lamp ceremony. The two new offices are expected to help Summit scale drastically in the near future in the respective regions.

Towards showcasing Summit Digitel’s achievements, values, and ethos as a company to both internal and external stakeholders. Our work over the past quarter has been exciting in many ways. The quarter was off to a great start, with the team winning the National Awards for Leadership & Excellence in Branding & Marketing in the telecom space being recognised for our efforts in internal communications, office branding and website redevelopment, among others.

The team had multiple functional offsites this quarter, for which the MarComm team provided crucial support with unique themes and various collaterals. Another special event was the meet with Airtel to celebrate 5000 sites delivered, for which the team produced a customised video featuring bytes from the Airtel Leadership team across the country.

The team also took up the Pan-India office branding exercise, where the Summit Digitel brand’s value and ethos were reinforced. At the same time, elements that were unique to the regions of Delhi and Kolkata were added as well, to bring local flavour to each office space.

On a broader level, we supported engagement activities such as Summit’s Independence Day celebrations, where the employees shared unique selfies in their tricolour outfits.

Additionally, one of our key metrics is leadership positioning, for which we worked on the amplification of the Town Hall and increased their respective engagements on Linkedin to drive the overall Summit Digitel message. Speaking of social media, we also showed the beautiful work-life balance at Summit with the #ThursdayThrill campaign, to showcase how Summitians know how to work hard and party harder! A clear sign of our increased engagement has been the LinkedIn family, now over 3000+ followers strong, sending a sign that Summit is gaining more visibility among partners, customers, and talent.

With the implementation of Project Shikhar- SAP Go-live, the conversion of Summit into a public limited company, and strong quarterly financial results . We are proud of the progress that Summit Digitel has made, and look forward to closing 2022 on a high! Here’s how the Finance team shone bright over the last quarter:

Implementation of Project Shikhar:

Summit implemented ‘Project Shikhar’ - SAP S4/ HANA (a world class ERP system) - at the beginning of September. Summit’s Business, IT, and Finance teams planned this rollout extensively, while relentlessly and collaboratively worked along with IBM (implementation partner) over the last few months to achieve this outcome. The SAP system is a strategic part of our digital transformation journey. It is a green field implementation integrated with third party systems. It will transform how we operate by using information to make informed decisions, thereby building a stronger organization.

The key modules implemented include Finance and Controlling, Material Management, Funds Management, Sales and Distribution, Investment Management, Group Reporting, Business Warehouse, Data Intelligence and DMS. SAP is a future-fit and scalable system, and will serve as a strong backbone for our overall digital transformation strategy. This will enable us to build synergies and integration with new systems planned in future to derive greater efficiencies and long-term growth. We encourage you to learn about how the new ways of working in SAP will impact you. Please feel free to reach out to Finance to know about the new SAP processes.

More than just a name change:

Summit Digitel was converted into a public limited company, and subsequently, we saw a change in our name to ‘Summit Digitel Infrastructure Limited’ effective Jul 22, 2022. This will add new compliances by Summit to India’s laws and regulations, and enable us to expand our investor base.

Quarterly Financial Results:

The quarterly financial results of Summit for the quarter ended Jun 30, 2022 were approved by the Board and a limited review was carried out by our Statutory Auditors. The revenue for the quarter ended 30 Jun 22 was INR 27,422 Million and EBITDA was INR 10,115 Million. These were published not only on our website, but also in the leading newspapers.

HR Strategy Meet & Offsite:

HR and Admin team organized and participated in the first “HR Strategy Meet & Offsite” from 28th June to 1 st July at the Taj Fort Aguada in Goa. During the offsite, HR and Admin team members came together to brainstorm on new strategies, ways of working, unwind and build a stronger bond. There were 2 business sessions by our CSMO, Devesh Garg, Deputy CFO, Inder Mehta to provide insights to the HR team on our business model and financial model. There were various team building and fun filled activities where everyone participated wholeheartedly.

Employee Engagement Independence Day celebration:

With the theme “Nation First, Always First,” we celebrated the 75 th anniversary of India’s Independence Day in five operational offices: Corporate Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bengaluru, and Kolkata. On this occasion, the office decor and dress code were Tricolour to depict the true spirit of patriotism.

Ganesh Chaturthi celebration across Summit Offices:

During this auspicious season of Ganesh Chaturthi, employees across Summit offices celebrated this festival with lots of enthusiasm, fervour and faith.

L&D interventions NHRDN:

A virtual workshop was conducted on “ WOMEN ON TAPPING YOUR OWN POTENTIAL – ENRICHING AND EMPOWERING WITHIN”. All women employees of Summit were nominated to attend this workshop with an objective to upskill their potential and enhance leadership development.

ICSI 50th Convention Workshop:

Memoir of ICSI, workshop scheduled from 1st to 3rd September 2022 Summit nominated 2 of its employees from Company Secretarial team. This forum gave opportunity to attend various discussions on recent amendments in the provisions of the Companies Act and SEBI Listing Regulation. It will also benefit them to build network with the Company Secretaries of top listed companies in India.

Vision, Mission, Values & Culture (VMVC) cascade:

As a part of VMVC initiative employee cascading workshops were conducted at Kolkata and Gurgaon for East, North Region employees respectively. The objective was to acquaint the participants with VMVC ideology and how to imbibe and demonstrate these pillars in day-to-day work life.

Birthday Celebrations:

As a company, we strive to ensure that employees’ birthdays are celebrated in a joyful manner. We have a monthly celebration in which all employees whose birthdays fall during that month get together to cut cake and a have a small celebration. There is a lot of camaraderie and joy at work for employees who celebrate their birthdays during the month. Such events serve to strengthen team relationships and allow for people to establish a rapport within and across teams.

New offices:

Pooja and Inauguration of East Region, KWB circle at Kolkata and North Region, Delhi and Haryana Circle office at Gurgaon.

New Joinees:

We are proud to have several new additions to our teams in the last quarter. Each individual adds a unique dimension to Summit and we are looking forward to working together for many years to come.

Umesh Prasad Yadav Sr. Executive- Billing

Ganesh L Mani DGM- Treasury

Saikat Karmakar

KrishnaKumar Yadav

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Manager – Circle HSSE

Farah Tehmton Irani GM - Company Secretary

This was seen in the team’s resilience to put their best foot forward, even amidst the monsoon floods across India, for which strategic and pre-emptive measures were undertaken, and goals were achieved with minimal disruption. Through careful, prompt, and appropriate response measures, the network performance has been consistently increased at a broad scale, turning the task of dealing with difficult environments into just another day.

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The importance of staying green:

Sustainability continues to take a prominent precedence on the operations and maintenance front. The implementation of several new projects emphasised the organization’s commitment to developing a strong culture of in accordance with its values.

Numerous projects have already produced substantial outcomes, one of which was the first-ever absence of fire mishaps at Summit in the month of July 2022.

Summit has witnessed swift and momentous industry expansion in the areas of new sharing and relocation across geographies. Most circles are already centurions and are looking towards steep growth curves. Healthy consumer connections, a commitment fuelled by openness, and successful outcomes have resulted in customer appreciation and a drive to deliver on new milestones.

A testimony to this is how we encourage daily team participation, weekly circle evaluations, and monthly reviews, leading to a 360-degree safety and efficiency focused approach.

Concentrating on the digitalization of operational health and safety activities, we have implemented the Digital Safety Passport (inspection of PPE equipment through QR code validation), Permit to Work (PTW) through MS forms, and have taken strides to create a digital platform for “Site Audits” through our mobile application.

This App offers the operations team with an easy-to-use and cutting-edge user experience, that has done away with the old, time-consuming manual processes of site audits.

The team also actively participates in activities aimed at bettering our environment. The Summit Operations team planted trees and made a vow to stop using single plastics on World Environment Day, as part of our Green Initiatives event.

Regulatory:

The Hon’ble Minister of Communication & IT released Right of Way (RoW) Rules (Amendments) - 2022 on August 25, 2022, which bring countrywide uniformity in the administrative charges for issuing No Objection Certificate (NOC) to install mobile towers and OFCs.

The Rules also facilitate online application process and single window clearances. The notified RoW rules also have a provision for deemed approval of the application after a lapse of 60 days from application filing date, in case no action is taken by the concerned authorities such as state governments, local bodies and district administrations. For SDIL, release of these rules shall result in clarity of application process and document requirements, leading to less rejections and returns of NOC applications. This will result in savings in administrative costs of application, and will also provide online visibility of application status leading to better planning of tower installation and subsequent processes. SDIL actively participated in the process of drafting of these rules and the event of their release by MoC & IT.’

Airtel Partners Meet: Bihar Jharkhand Summit Team received multiple awardsAward for Excellence. Delivering Critical sites.

In line with our IT Team’s incessant endeavour to march towards continuous process improvement and automation of various business processes, Project Shikar is implemented in record time.

As part of the project, we are able to implement functional modules in the areas of

and implemented an entry level data management system. Many departments came together as combined force to drive such a powerful initiative.

SAP Journey at Summit Digitel:

Summit Digitel has attained significant organizational growth in a span of 2 years. The latest feather in our cap is the adoption of SAP to support business growth and align with our mission and objectives

As part of the SAP implementation process, we had ‘discover and explore’ phases focused on the business blue-print preparation and project planning. Additionally, resource planning and onboarding were also accomplished. The team also went through a realization phase, where the activities related to configuration, customisation, development, integration and testing were accomplished.

To make users more aware of the system, comprehensive end-user trainings were conducted for business users for financial and accounting, fund management, sales and billing and approval. Exclusive training was organized for CXOs for the approval processes. The team also imbibed valuable feedback and incorporated the same into the processes.

Go-Live and Launching Event:

The new SAP S/4 HANA system was launched on September 1, 2022, marking an important turning point in our digital journey. The day was marked by the presence of our CEO & MD, CXOs, the project team, business core team, business users from pan-India, and key delegates from SAP and IBM.

As part of the inauguration, we gave our thanks to Lord Ganesh while the lamp-lighting ceremony set the stage to signify a new start. This was followed by a welcome note by our COO, Mr. Sachin Naik. Our CEO & MD Mr. Dhananjay Joshi announced go-live by congratulating and appreciating Project Team and Businesses for their commendable job to implement the project successfully.

The click for the first transaction was carried out by our CFO, Mr. Dinesh Jain. A transaction of Rs 5 lakhs initiated by Reliance Jio, which went down the record books as the first customer payment on the new SAP system. This was followed by speeches from Mr. Inder Mehta and other CXOs, who spoke extensively about collaborations and business contributions in the project.

Mr. Rajesh Mittal (VP-IT) spoke briefly about project’s challenges, endeavour, team’s spirits and dedications towards project. He thanked all team members (IT & Business) for their incessant contribution to make the project successful.

The key success of SAP implementation can be ensured by fast adoption of SAP by all business users to perform their daily activities.

01Business Partners’ Payment Processes

This is now fully automated and integrated with the bank system. Once the payment is initiated, it is credited in the partner’s account and the payment confirmation is recorded in the SAP System by updating the UTR number

Customer Invoicing Process

This has already been activated in the new SAP System with complete automation. Once any invoice to a customer is generated by the billing team, it is auto dispatched to the customer digitally. The QR code and amount debited/credited is also captured in the invoice automatically from the Government portal through an integration with Cygnet. Moreover, the digital signature is embedded in the invoice

03PR creation and approval process is fully automated. What this means is that the approver can access the system from their mobile through SAP Fiori and can approve it at ease, anytime and from anywhere. This will result in better efficiency and productivity.

Similarly, business processes are simplified and automated in the new system. Summit’s IT and Business teams will continue to work together to innovate new functionalities and features as part of Summit’s Digital Transformation journey

Revalidation of resilience to critical systems:

Every day, there are host of new and evolving cybersecurity threats that keep information and security teams of large and small organisations on their toes. No organisation’s IT infrastructure can be a hundred percent immune from cyberattacks. The Summit IT team’s goal is to keep threats at bay by periodically retesting the resilience of critical systems to ensure that business processes keep running smoothly, and risks of cyberthreat can be mitigated at the earliest, in case of such eventualities.

This quarter, the IT team successfully retested critical Interim FA applications to ensure business continuity in case of any unfavourable events. During the testing phase the backup of the application was restored from the cloud backup, and the application was set up from scratch using the recovered data. The business finance team was given access to get acclimated to the new setup. Post successful completion, the primary site was restored, and its smooth functioning was confirmed by the finance team.

INSIGHTS CXO award 2022 to VP-IT Rajesh Mittal

In honour and recognition to Summit Digitel’s Leadership at a national level, the VP of IT, Rajesh Mittal, was awarded the “Insight CXO Award 2022” by CIOAXIS, for his contribution in bringing an enterprise level digital transformation by implementing latest technologies in Summit Digitel’s processes. Rajesh understands the importance of adopting disruptive technologies and staying ahead of the technology curve. At Summit Digitel, his contribution in the field of game-changing technology, cybersecurity, automation and cloud is unparalleled. It is a great prestige collectively for Summit Digitel Family.

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