Bharti in major management shake-up
Bharti Enterprises announced a major organisational recast this week, strengthening the position of telecom heads Gopal Vittal and Christian de Faria and moving company veteran Manoj Kohli to head nontelecom businesses, marking the group’s bid to empower a new generation of leaders.
As reported earlier Vittal, currently India Chief Executive at Bharti Airtel, will also get charge of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He will be designated Managing Director and CEO of India and South Asia. That restores the structure that had prevailed earlier under Vittal’s predecessor Sanjay Kapoor.
Vittal was initially only given charge of India. South Asia was bracketed with Africa in the international business headed by Kohli. De Faria, who recently joined the company to head the African operations, will have full operational responsibility across 17 markets in the continent as Managing Director and CEO, Bharti Enterprises said in a release.
Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile phone operator and the world’s fourth largest by subscribers, said all the changes will be effective April 1.
“The new structure reflects the next phase of Bharti’s growth journey, which will be led by best-in-class professionals in various segments,” group Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said in the statement.
“This is another step towards transforming the group from entrepreneur-led, professional-backed to a professional-led entrepreneur-backed one,” he added. Kohli, who has been heading Bharti Airtel’s international business since its entry into Africa in 2010, will also become part of a new nine-member Bharti Governance Board headed by Mittal, the company said. The board will deal with matters such as governance and strategy. The changes coincide with Bharti’s bid to spruce up its African business, which has been something of a laggard, by bringing in de Faria.
“Bharti has been struggling with its African operations with continuing losses dragging the overall telecom business. It is taking longer than expected to turn around,” said a Mumbai-based analyst with a foreign brokerage. Back home in India, Vittal needs to ensure the company puts behind it the damage inflicted by a tariff war and ensure that it’s strong enough to withstand competition from rivals such as Vodafone India and Idea Cellular and from Reliance Jio in the future, amid the need to bid for spectrum afresh as its licences come to an end in two crucial circles later this year.
“It (the management recast) is in the right direction as it creates a much more professionally led, autonomous structure,” said Prashant Singhal of consultancy firm EY.
Apart from Sunil Mittal and Kohli, other members of the governance board will be the three Vice-Chairmen, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Rajan Bharti Mittal and Akhil Gupta, besides four Bharti veterans.
As far as the listed companies, Bharti Airtel and Bharti Infratel, are concerned, their respective boards will still have authority over them, the company said. Kohli, who takes over as managing director of Bharti Enterprises, will be in charge of the retail, insurance, food and agriculture, realty and other businesses of the group. In retail, the company had to end its ambitious joint venture with Walmart Inc. and is now going solo.