Bharti poaches Essar's seasoned Africa-based officials

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has poached two seasoned telecom executives of the Essar Group in Africa to make its $9-billion Zain Africa acquisition become the numero uno in the continent, surpassing South Africa’s MTN Group by 2015, said a person familiar with the hiring.

The company plans to move around many of its executives who made it the best-run telco in India, as it tries to extract benefits from the debt-laden acquisition. It will split the African businesses into three to gain operational advantages, said the person who did not want to be identified.

Bharti, backed by SingTel, hired Kenya-based Essar Telecom’s chief executive Jayant Khosla to head seven African nations, and Warid Telecom’s Sunio Colaso as distribution and marketing head in the continent.
These two executives are returning to Bharti after a brief hiatus. The company is betting on those experienced with its culture and have an exposure to the continent’s business, since it plans to launch the Airtel brand by October to double users in Africa in three years.

Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti, has said the company would move swiftly and aggressively to make the acquisition of Zain’s African assets profitable. The acquisition has been criticised by some investors for the $9-billion loan that Bharti has taken to fund the deal. It will cost the company about $200 million a year in interest payments. The stock has been underperforming the market.

Bharti has also settled a legal dispute with Broad Communications over the Nigerian operations of Zain and posted its executive director for enterprise services Rajan Swaroop as CEO and MD there. Its West Bengal and Orissa CEO, Deepak Srivastava, would assist him as chief operating officer. A company spokesperson confirmed the changes, but declined comment on the hirings from Essar.

It is also pushing some of its backroom boys.

Bhaskar Chakraborty, who built the supply chain, customer service chief Rahul Gupta, and technology services head Rupinder Goel would be supporting Manoj Kohli to make the Zain acquisition a success.

Bharti is also aiming at operational changes that would facilitate its success. It would be split into three markets — the English-speaking Anglophone headed by Mr Khosla, French-speaking Francophone by Tiemoko Coulibaly and Nigeria by Mr Swaroop.

Yves Mayilamene, who was heading the HR for Francophone operations for Zain Africa, will be human resources chief in the continent.