Exit of top executives continues at RCOM; stock down

KOLKATA: Reliance Infratel CEO SP Shukla has quit the company making him the third top executive to leave the Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Communications, the country's second-largest mobile phone company by customers, within the last two months.

At 10:00 am, shares of Reliance Communications were trading 1.16 per cent down at Rs 81 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

His resignation comes barely a month after the mobile phone company lost two frontline executives in charge of networks, Arun Sur and Jagbir Singh, to ZTE Corp and Bharti Airtel, respectively.

Besides heading Infratel, Shukla has also been managing RCOM's international projects as one of the senior-most members of Anil Ambani's special projects team. RCOM had won a licence to run GSM services in Uganda during his tenure in the special projects team.

Confirming his resignation, Shukla said his decision to leave the company was not influenced by the fact that three top RCOM officials had been arrested in the 2G spectrums scam.

"I had pulled out of RCOM's wireless division two years ago and have been managing the towers business ever since. My decision to leave is purely personal. Having spent 15 years in this sector from my early days in Essar Swisscom and then Reliance, I wish to take on new challenges outside telecom," Shukla told ET.

In response to ET's query, an RCOM spokesman said: "Shukla, president (special projects), has expressed his intent to look at a new assignment in his career and is being relieved on May 31. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors. This portfolio has been integrated into the wireless business, managed by president (wireless)."

Like Sur, Shukla is also a Reliance group old timer who had earlier headed RCOM's wireless mobility division as president before current CEO Syed Safawi stepped into the saddle. It was during his tenure that the wireless division grew from scratch and started generating nearly 15,000 crore in annual revenues. He had been asked to assume the reins at Reliance Infratel in October 2010 after its then CEO, Inder Bajaj, quit.

Though he remains tightlipped on his next port-of-call, industry circles are rife with rumours that Shukla may not exit telecom in a hurry but instead take on a leadership role in either Maxis-controlled Aircel or in China's Huawei. Shukla declined to comment on these rumours. A section of executives close to him, however, do not rule out his quitting the telecom space altogether.