Bharti announces top appointments for Africa operations
Bharti Airtel has decided to structure its acquired operations in Africa into three separate divisions, each of which will be headed by a chief executive officer (CEO). These divisions include Bharti Anglophone (comprising the English-speaking countries -­ Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leonne, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia), Bharti Francophone (comprising the French-speaking countries -­ Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Congo B, Madagascar, Niger and Gabon), and Nigeria (the continent's largest telecom market).To head the Anglophone division, Bharti Airtel has brought in Essar Telecom's CEO Jayant Khosla, who is currently based in Kenya. For the Francophone countries, it has appointed Zain's chief operating officer (COO) Tiemoko Coulibaly as CEO.Bharti Airtel's executive director (ED) for enterprise services Rajan Swaroop will take over as CEO and managing director for the Nigeria operations, while the current CEO for West Bengal and Orissa, Deepak Srivastava, will be the COO and ED in Nigeria. The company has also appointed Sunil Colaso, CEO of the Ruias-owned Warid Telecom, as head of the distribution and marketing divisions across all the 15 geographies in Africa. Yves Mayilamene, who was heading HR for the Francophone operations for Zain Africa, will now head Bharti's HR division for all 15 countries. Caba Pinter, who is currently heading the finance functions of Zain in that region, will be the deputy chief financial officer (CFO) of Airtel Africa. N. Arjun has been assigned the responsibility of integrating all operations in Africa into a common entity. Bhaskar Chakraborty, who is largely credited for building the supply chain capabilities for Airtel in India, has been asked to replicate the model in Africa. Rahul Gupta, chief customer service officer for Bharti Airtel's mobility business in India, will head customer services for Africa, while Rupinder Goel, who has led the technology services vertical across businesses for Airtel in India, has been given the responsibility of chief information officer (CIO) for Airtel Africa.

RCOM makes key appointments
Reliance Communications (RCOM) has recruited over half a dozen senior executives to strengthen its management structure.Sitapathy Chavali, a former Vodafone Essar employee, has been recruited as wireless CTO for RCOM. He has earlier worked with Idea Cellular and Lucent Technologies (US). Former Bharti Airtel executive Nagesh Rajanna has been appointed as the national head of sales and distribution. Other executives who have been brought in from different companies are Anuraj Prashar from Airtel and Naresh Gupta from Vodafone Essar.

Vodafone's Harit Nagpal moves to Tata Sky
Harit Nagpal, currently serving as group marketing director for Vodafone Plc, has put in his papers and will be joining DTH service provider Tata Sky. He will replace Vikram Kaushik as managing director of Tata Sky and will join the company in August 2010. Nagpal has more than 25 years of experience in the field of marketing, including nine years at Vodafone Essar.

Ravi Sharma joins Adani Power as CEO
Former South Asia chief of Alcatel-Lucent, Ravi Sharma, is moving to the Gujarat-based Adani Group as CEO of group company Adani Power. After working with Alcatel-Lucent, Sharma also had a short stint at Videocon-owned Datacom where he had provided a headstart to the new entrant in setting up its operations. Sharma eventually exited Datacom in 2008 due to the prolonged dispute between the Nahata Group and the Dhoots of Videocon. After exiting from Datacom, Sharma had floated a firm called Phi Televentures in partnership with Oxigen's Pramod Saxena and B.D. Khurana. He has earlier also worked with BT and the UB Group.

Navin Vohra promoted as vice-president, sales, Asia Pacific, at Andrew Solutions
Navin Vohra, vice-president sales for India and SAARC at Andrew Solutions, has been promoted as vice-president, sales, for Asia-Pacific. In his new, expanded role, Vohra will be responsible for leading all of Andrew's customer-facing sales activities in the Asia-Pacific region, including India but excluding China.The China sales organisation will continue to be led by Chinnee Tong, vice-president, sales, for China.

Netxcell Limited appoints Sarvesh Asthana as senior vicepresident, technology
Telecom applications service provider Netxcell Limited has appointed Sarvesh Asthana as senior vice-president, technology.In his last role as general manager with RCOM, he was heading the value-added service (VAS) delivery platform, access devices and VAS technical solutions teams responsible for CDMA (1x/EVDO) as well as GSM (GPRS/3G) technologies. Asthana has worked with companies like Nokia, Alcatel and Tata Consultancy Services.