Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel has asked its chief information officer (CIO) Jai Menon to step down due to code of conduct violations.
According to a report in Economic Times, during an investigation, it was found that Menon, who turns 50 in January, had economic interests in some of the companies which were awarded contracts.
TelecomLead.com could not verify these allegations.
ET report says Menon denied this issue as he said the allegations are not true and he was not asked to leave from Airtel, the leading telecom operator in India.
The report says Menon’s office was sealed on 3 December and asked him to leave with immediate effect.
Airtel is currently probing the matter. It is believed that some of the vendors under the guidance of Menon received outsourcing orders from Bharti Airtel.
Earlier, he resigned from Airtel in two occasions to work with rivals such as Vodafone and Reliance Communications for short period.
In April 2011, Menon returned to Bharti Airtel with some global role after spending one year with rival Vodafone.
In the earlier stint, he joined Airtel in 2002 as CIO and corporate director for information technology, becoming group CIO in 2007.
As Bharti’s CIO, he was the architect of $800-million, 10-year deal with IBM, under which Bharti outsourced all its IT requirements to the global giant.
In 2005, Menon had quit Bharti to join rival Reliance Communications but came back to the Bharti-fold within a few days.
Currently, IBM and Airtel are re-negotiating for a deal.
Meanwhile, Mint reported that Menon has put in his papers to go back to research and innovation of new technologies after spending more than a decade at the group.
“I spent my forties consuming IT in the telecom sector, my thirties creating and innovating IT through IBM in the US and my twenties in deep core mathematics research. In my fifties, I want to go back to deep technology research and create IP (intellectual property) and technologies rather than as a consumer of technology,” Menon told Mint.
Before joining Bharti Airtel, Menon had filed more than 30 patents.
After Bharti Airtel’s acquisition of Kuwait-based Zain’s Africa assets in 2010, Menon was additionally appointed as chief technology and information officer of Airtel Africa, where he ran networks and IT, in addition to serving as Bharti’s Group CIO.
He started his career at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Labs in the US and became an executive director in IBM’s Software Group, heading worldwide research-to-market business. From there he joined AT&T as chief technology officer for IT across all lines of businesses.
