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| Edited By: Nivedita Mookerji |Source: |Updated: Sep 14, 2017, 04:00 PM IST
Another Indian rises in global telecom space
NEW DELHI: After Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin and France Telecom unit Orange’s CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, India can boast of another helmsman in the international telecom space.
Sandip Das, deputy managing director of Hutch-Essar, will join as the CEO of Maxis Communications, the biggest mobile operator in Malaysia, from mid-January 2007.
Das quits after a 13-year stint at Hutch-Essar.
Maxis owns 74% in Aircel, the leading mobile operator in Chennai. The company is seeking a pan-India presence, after recently acquiring licences for seven circles.
“I will head the Malaysia operations of Maxis. In addition, I will have a supporting role in their India strategy,” Das said.
Based out of Kuala Lumpur, Das will work along with Maxis Group CEO Jamaludin Ibrahim.
“They (Maxis) would like to leverage my India experience,” Das said, since “India is a very high growth market”.
His role in supporting the India strategy is significant. As a market analyst pointed out, “India is the most important telecom market for Maxis, after perhaps Malaysia.” Another industry watcher said, “Malaysia already tracks the India market very closely, and this development will only strengthen the focus.” Besides Maxis, Telekom Malaysia also has a presence in India. Telekom Malaysia has a 49 per cent stake in Spice Telecom.
Since Malaysia has a mobile penetration level of over 80% with more than 20 million subscriber (as of early 2006), India is certainly an attractive market for the country’s telcos with its still considerably low penetration level. Malaysia has the second highest mobile penetration in South East Asia after Singapore.
In India, there are 136.22 million mobile subscribers, out of a total of 176.78 million telecom users. India’s teledensity (including fixed and mobile) is 16%. Maxis recently acquired seven more licences-Madhya Pradesh, UP East, UP West, Kolkata, Kerala, Haryana and Punjab.
Getting the call
Aircel has operations in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Orissa, Assam, North East and Jammu & Kashmir.
It’s also in the process of rolling out operations in Bihar and Himachal
