Tata rejigs top mgmt at group companies

In a major top level reshuffle at the Tata group, Anil Sardana, the current Managing Director of Tata Teleservices, will step down to take over as the MD of Tata Power. The appointment is with effect from February 1. Sardana will replace Prasad Menon who will retire on January 31.

N Srinath, who has been the MD and CEO of yet another group company, Tata Communications, will take over as the MD of both TTSL and TTML. Vinod Kumar who is a director on the board of Tata Communications and manages the global data business unit, will replace N Srinath, with effect from February 1.

With the rejig, Sardana will move back to the power sector where he has worked for over thirty years. Sardana, who had been serving as the MD of Tata Teleservices for over three years and in Tata Teleservices Maharashtra (TTML) for the last six months, is known across the telecom circles for triggering a tariff war in the telecom sector with the launch of Tata Docomo’s one-paisa-per-second tariff.

Sardana, 53, holds an electrical engineering degree and started his career with National Thermal Power Corporation. He was with Tata Power and headed its distribution business as the CEO before he joined TTSL.

Srinath will now head the telecom operations of the group, at a time when the industry is facing challenges of reduced margins and subscriber churn. The company has recently launched its 3G services. He had been at the helm of affairs at Tata Communciations since 2007, then called VSNL.

Srinath had seen the company transform from a monopoly, public sector undertaking into a global communications services provider.

The company now has a submarine cable network, an IP network connecting more than 200 countries, and nearly one million square feet of data centre space worldwide. The company which is majorly into enterprise business and offers advanced network and cloud services solutions to customers worldwide.

“It has been the most exciting and challenging period of my life; I am happy that today Tata Communications has built the assets, capabilities and reputation to be regarded as a global challenger,” said Srinath.

Ground set for Tata Tele, Tata Comm merger
In spite of taking over a bigger responsibility, Srinath will continue to be a non-executive director on the board of Tata Communications and some of its subsidiaries and associate companies like Neotel, the company said in a press release.

Sources said this could be the first step towards the merger of Tata Teleservices and Tata Communications. Tata Comm, with its network capabilities and international long distance (ILD) licence, will provide support to TTSL’s business. Tata Teleservices, which offers GSM and CDMA services under the brand names Tata Docomo and Tata Indicom has around 75 million subscribers on its network.

“Tata Comm works only in the international domain and Tata Teleservices works exclusively in the national domain. If both companies were to get together, the combined entity can offer end-to-end services across the telecom domain,” said a source close to the development.