Bharti Airtel announces changes in top level leadership, Raghunath Mandava made Africa head

KOLKATA: Bharti Airtel, third-largest phone company in the world by subscriber base, has announced top level leadership changes in its global operations, elevating Raghunath Mandava as its Africa head and moving the unit’s current head Christian Defaria to the Netherlands.

Mandava, currently chief operating officer of Airtel Africa, will take over as managing director and chief executive officer on January 1, 2017 and will be a permanent invitee to the Bharti Airtel board, representing Airtel Africa, the company said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Defaria, executive chairman at Airtel Africa, has been designated chairman, Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV, also from January 1.

He will "ensure smooth handing over of all operational matters to Mandava, and will continue to support him and the team on regulatory, government and shareholder matters", the Airtel statement said.

The leadership change comes at a time when sector analysts and industry experts are cautiously optimistic that the Sunil Mittal-founded telco might turn around its loss-making Africa operations in 2017-18 if it’s able to sustain the strong customer base growth and accelerated data usage and mobile money adoption levels of the September quarter, and back them with more cost-optimisation steps.

Airtel’s Africa operations, which is down to 15 countries from 17 earlier, have not reported a profit in any quarter since India’s top telco entered Africa six years ago, dragging the firm’s consolidated financials.

Bharti Airtel’s September quarter numbers, however, suggest new stirrings in its Africa operations. The company reduced Africa net loss to $91 million from $170 million a year earlier.

Revenue increased 3.7 per cent year on year to $898 million in the September quarter, helped by customer base expansion, surging data usage, 54 per cent jump in the value of Airtel Money transactions, and currency stabilisation in most markets, barring Nigeria.

"It's critical Airtel Africa improves its performance and targets leadership position in key markets like Nigeria and Kenya to make any potential turnaround closer to reality," said a sector analyst in a leading brokerage.