Bharti Infratel Ltd, the telecom tower arm of Bharti Airtel Ltd, has elevated Devender Singh Rawat as an additional director and managing director from his existing role as CEO while the current managing director and vice-chairman Akhil Gupta has been appointed as executive chairman of the company, as per a stock market disclosure.
Both the appointments are effective from April 2014.
Rawat, who has over 17 years of experience, joined the company in August 2010 as a CEO, succeeding Prem Pradeep who was serving as the CEO at that time. Rawat joined Bharti Infratel from Huawei Technologies and has previously also worked with companies like Escotel and Ericsson.
He is an engineering graduate in Electronics and Communications from Osmania University in Hyderabad.
Akhil Gupta is one of the top executives of Bharti Group and a close confidante of the promoter Mittal family. He has been deeply involved in the growth of the communications business from the very beginning and has been closely associated with all mergers and acquisitions and strategy of Airtel.
Gupta has been with the flagship company Bharti Airtel since it launched mobile operations in Delhi way back in 1995. In 2012, he stepped down from Bharti Airtel's board to join the telecom tower arm of Airtel.
Gupta takes the chairman’s role from Rakesh Bharti Mittal, the eldest of the three brothers who run Bharti Group.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
