Tata Tele inducts 4 new members in top rung
Business Standard — December 21, 2004

In the absence of a managing director at Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) and with the company planning to have a pan-India presence, TTSL has inducted three key management personnel from the Tata group and one expat from Telstra, Australia. The company has also carved out a separate marketing and customer care division to strengthen its operations across the country. Firdose Vandrevala, chairman, said, "We are bringing in four new people to add on to the existing four-member team, to have a perfect combination of Tata experience and youth."

Pointing out that there was a need to separate customer care division from marketing, Vandrevala pointed out that 'several issues have to be sorted out with the roll out taking place and we have roped in top executives from the Tata group to expand the management council." The new members are Jehangir Ardeshir, formerly with Tata Steel and Tata Quality Management is the president (customer care), Harish Bhatt, currently CEO of Tanishq and earlier with Tata Tea, is the new president (marketing), Vinayak Deshpande, former managing director of Tata Honeywell, as president operations to look after the south and western regions, while Amit Bose, current president (marketing), will be in charge of corporate affairs, including business planning and processing, knowledge and quality management.

Ajay Pandey, current president (operations), will look after the north and east circles. TTSL has also roped in Greg Young from Telstra, Australia, as president, network operations and value-added services. TTSL is expanding its network to 1,000 towns by March 2005 towns, which will enable the company not only to have a pan-India presence but will also help users to roam country-wide onits network. The company has already signed up 300,000 subscribers last month and has added two lakh subscribers by the middle of the current month, At present, TTSL has 2.5 million subscribers.