Indian telecom service provider Bharti Airtel will name Abhay Savargaonkar as the chief technology officer (CTO) for India.
He will also be one of the members of the Airtel Management Board, the company’s highest decision-making unit. Abhay will replace Jagbir Singh, Airtel CTO, who is likely to join a telecom rival next month. Jagbir Singh, a telecom veteran, came back to Airtel in April 2011 after a brief stint at rival Reliance Communications.
Abhay has been at Bharti Airtel, the #1 mobile service provider in India, for 10+ years and is currently the chief of network operations.
He has held various senior leadership roles covering the breadth of almost all network verticals including leading the 3G planning and deployment, quality, network planning and being the CTO of mobile business when it was a stand-alone business.
His LinkedIn profile says he has been responsible for running the operations of entire network – all lines of business ( India / Sri Lanka / Bangladesh) and Opex management of $2 billion annually since December 2012.
Prior to this, Abhay was the chief of network planning – Network Services Group at Bharti Airtel during July 2011 to December 2012, CTO – Mobile Services, Airtel during August 2010 to July 2011 and head — 3G network planning and quality for 4 years.
Abhay also worked with Lucent Technologies, which was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent, as CMO for 1.5 years.
Airtel is facing a series of exodus at the top level ever since Gopal Vittal took over as chief executive officer of India business.
Some of the senior executives who left the company include: Jyoti Pawar, legal and regulatory head; Sukesh Jain, chief marketing officer at Airtel enterprise business; Rohit Gothi, head of Airtel Delhi; Tamil Nadu; and Vikas Singh, Kerala hub head; and Mohit Parasher, head of Bharti Airtel retail outlets.
Pix source: Bharat Exhibitions
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
