Aircel, has appointed Dr Kaizad Heerjee (ex CEO from U Mobile, Malaysia) as the company’s COO. The leadership position was vacant for past few months, post the exit of Gurdeep Singh (he has recently taken over as President & CEO for Reliance Wireless Business). Aircel is the country’s fifth-largest telecom company, with over 60 million customers. The company has a majority ownership by Malaysia’s Maxis. Jean Pascal, from Maxis had reportedly taken over as the COO, post exit of Gurdeep Singh.
Kaizad Heerjee, has most recently been with U Mobile, Malaysia as the CEO. Ealier he has worked with Indosat, Singapore Technologies, Star Hub, Informm Development Authority of Singapore & Digital Equitment Corporation. He has a PhD in Computer science, and MSc in IT. During his over 20 years of experience he has been with top companies in the areas of technology & communications.
Earlier this year, we had seen a series of top team exits from Aircel, following business restructuring announced in last part of 2011. Following the changes in organization, the company saw the exit of Gurdeep Singh, the COO followed by the exit of group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Malickarjun Rao, and the company’s Chief Marketing Officer Rahul Saighal.
The overhaul of organization lead to the business being split into two divisions – one focused on Operations –OpCo & the other focused on Networks – NetCo. The Operations, division being responsible for marketing, branding, go to market strategy and expansion. The Networks division responsible for active infrastructure of the company. The company had earlier hived off its passive infrastructure assets (tower business) to GTL. Sudhir Mathur, the CFO has been heading the Networks division.
Under the present structure, both the division would report to the new COO, while Sudhir Mathur, would also have a direct reporting to Sandip Das, CEO , Maxis. It seems, that following the changing dynamics of the telecom industry, the structure may have been pushed back in some ways, to its earlier shape.