By Jevans Nyabiage (.standardmedia.co.ke)
Airtel Kenya managing director Rene Meza has quit to join Vodacom
Tanzania, at a time when the industry is witnessing stiff competition.
In his place, the firm has appointed Shivan Bhargava, who joined the
operation recently as Chief Operating Officer
“He will assume the responsibility of running the Kenya unit, as Meza
moves on to pursue other career interests outside Airtel,” the company
said in a statement.
Bhargava has been with the Bharti Airtel Group since 2003 and has in
the past worked at Coca-Cola.
Meza returns to Tanzania where he previously headed Millicom’s (Tigo).
“We’re excited to have Rene joining the team. He brings a wide range
of experience from emerging markets as diverse as Paraguay, Pakistan
and Kenya,” Vodacom’s chief executive for international operations,
Johan Dennelind said.
Vodacom is a subsidiary of Vodafone which also owns a stake in Kenya’s
market leader, Safaricom.
Meza replaces Dietlof Mare, who had requested a change in roles after
spending almost five years in Tanzania.
Recently insider reports indicated that Meza had resigned from the
firm, which he denied.
The firm’s technical director, John Barorot had left the firm during
this time, barely two months after taking up the position.
In August last year, Airtel Kenya triggered tariff wars when it cut
rates by more than 50 per cent to Sh3 across networks, which followed
retaliations from other mobile phone service operators.
The operators have resorted to subsidising of calls. Essar’s yu runs a
promotion in which subscribers make free on-net calls between 6am and
6pm.
Airtel is adopting a low-cost model like its Indian parent Bharti
Airtel and is increasingly opting to outsource non-core businesses
that saw it hand over its network functions to Nokia Siemens Network,
customer care (Spanco services) and IT work to IBM.
The price cuts have slowed the industry’s profitability.
Just a few days ago, the firm sacked 50 of its employees, among them
senior staff, and offloaded some of its major retail outlets to
dealers, as company owners increase pressure for the Kenyan team to
deliver.