2024 Individual Awards Winner for Executive of the Year
Tapan Dandnaik’s Mentality Keeps Mediacom on Top
By Sara Winegardner
In another world, Tapan Dandnaik is still working as an engineer. Mediacom’s SVP, Operations, Product Strategy, and Consumer Experience worked as a Lead Project Engineer at Ingersoll-Rand in India for nearly two years before pursuing additional educational opportunities, and that background has shaped his approach to his professional career in cable.
“Being an engineer, I like to process and I like to really see how things connect with each other so you can make a good overall product and experience,” Dandnaik says. “Having that visibility and doing the work with the modeling, it just really helped me connect the dots.”
It was when he completed his MBA in Finance from Indiana University Bloomington that he found a chance to join the cable industry. The idea of connecting homes to technological advancements like video fascinated him, and he had an opportunity to assist his cousin at his internet startup. He continued looking for the right moment to join the industry, and eventually wrote an email to a recruiter for RCN. Not only did the recruiter respond, but he invited Dandnaik to fly to Princeton to interview for a position as an analyst in corporate development. Due to some internal switch-ups at RCN, Dandnaik instead interviewed for a similar role in the finance department and was brought on in July 2000.
He dove right in, spending time talking about operations and building models, but RCN also made sure he understood the business before he was in too deep. “The first three months, everyone went through this cable camp, so you learned about the business, installation, and everything… I appreciate it a lot,” Dandnaik says. “But then I spent time out of my day job just to make sure, for example, with marketing, how do you get a sale…; how does a direct mail become a response? How does it become a call? That all led me to really understand the business.”
He stayed at RCN through its 2004 bankruptcy proceeding and assisted the new executive team into 2005 before heading to Mediacom, which he continues to call home today. Starting as VP, Financial Operations, he has risen through the ranks and added operational strategy, customer service, data analytics and more to his list of responsibilities as he made his climb to his current role as SVP, Operations, Product Strategy and Consumer Experience. His outlook and dedication to asking about the “why” behind every situation is what led Mediacom founder Rocco Commisso to recommend Dandnaik for NCTA’s Vanguard Award for Young Leadership in 2012 and what earned him his nickname—The Troubleshooter.
Dandnaik has continued to embrace that approach, and it has served him well every step of the way, including in the lead-up to the launch of Mediacom Mobile through an MVNO arrangement with Verizon. He pushed for rigorous testing of the service from a technological standpoint, and approximately 170 employees signed up for 330 lines in the first month. He meticulously examined every aspect of the service, working with OEMs and understanding the intricacies of the device marketplace.
“I think we’ll learn a lot. Part of it is it’s a dynamic competitive business, and it [allows] our employees and teams to really compete at a different level,” Dandnaik said. “That’s the beauty about the industry—we just keep learning from each other and what we see. We don’t stand alone. A lot of people in the industry, they all root for each other… that’s really rare.”
While the planning for the mobile launch was underway, Mediacom also became the third U.S.-based cable operator to begin offering the Xumo Stream Box to its customers. Dandnaik is always looking for ways to offer more value to Mediacom customers, and it is no secret that linear TV has been on the decline.
“If you think about it our internet, most customers are using the internet to watch video. So what we’re giving through Xumo is an opportunity for them to bring their own streaming service, whatever you want to call that, and then as we develop, we’re going to provide them more and they can get free content, and so on and so forth,” he says.
