RCom appoints Bharti's Sawhny as CEO

Vinod Sawhny was exec director and CEO of the enterprise business Airtel Mobility and chief operating officer of Bharti Retail

Reliance Communications on Monday appointed former Airtel management board member Vinod Sawhny as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. He was serving as the executive director and CEO of the enterprise business Airtel Mobility and chief operating officer of Bharti Retail.

Sawhny had been with the Sunil Mittal-led group for the previous 10 years. “Sawhny brings with him over 30 years well-rounded experience in establishing and building overseas businesses,” said Reliance Communications in a statement to the stock exchanges. Sawhny is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and XLRI in Jamshedpur.

He had worked with Spice Telecom before joining Airtel. Spice later merged with Idea Cellular. Sawhny is the second Bharti Airtel executive which RCom snagged in the last few years. In late 2009, they appointed Syed Safawi also from Airtel as its CEO of wireless business. He later left the company in 2012 to join tower company Viom Networks.  

The country's top telecom operator Bharti Airtel too has rejigged its operations recently, making Gopal Vittal the managing director and CEO of the company. A company veteran Manoj Kohli was also took over as the head of Bharti Enterprises, the holding company.

Apart from Sawhny's appointment, RCom also said that Gurdeep Singh who took over Safawi as the CEO of wireless business, will be entrusted with more responsibilities. “He has been entrusted with enhanced responsibilities as CEO of wireless, direct-to-home and consumer broadband. That represents over 70 per cent of RCom's revenues and operating profit,” said RCom.

RCom also constituted its new management team with Sawhny, Gurdeep Singh, Punit Garg who is the CEO of enterprise business, Bill Barney who heads Globalcom, amongst others.

The company recently announced its quarterly results where its net profit grew flat at 2.8 per cent to Rs 108 crore. Its total income of the company grow even lesser at 1.9 per cent to Rs 5,403 crore from Rs 5,301 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.