Vodafone Romania CEO moves to India to take higher regional role

Telecom group Vodafone Romania’s CEO Ravinder Takkar will move to India where he will be appointed as Chairman Vodafone Group Services, Regional Business Development, starting July 15, 2017. Vodafone Group will announce in due course the new CEO for Romania, according to a company press release. After three years at the helm of Vodafone’s operations in Romania, Takkar will be responsible for representing the group’s interests in India, including ensuring the successful creation and integration of the new Vodafone India joint venture with Idea. He will also take responsibility for Vodafone’s business development in the Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific Region (AMAP) and will report to Vivek Badrinath, CEO for AMAP. “I spent three fulfilling years with Vodafone Romania in which I had the opportunity to build together with my management team and our employees on the most important pillars of our business: network performance, customer experience, financial stability. For three years in a row, our network was certified as Best in Test in Romania by P3 Communications, all our internal and external tools to measure customer satisfaction show us that our customers enjoy a superior experience, which we managed to translate in a constant growth of our customer base across all segments, the annual service revenue had a sustained growth as well. I also had the great joy to celebrate with our customers and employees the 20th anniversary since we launched the first digital mobile network in the country”, said Ravinder Takkar. Vodafone Romania reached a turnover of EUR 778 million and a net profit of EUR 42 million, in 2016, according to official data from the Finance Ministry. The operator had close to 2,800 employees. Under Takkar’s management, Vodafone also set up its Shared Services Center in Romania, in 2014. The two companies operating Vodafone service centers in Romania, namely Vodafone Romania Technologies and Vodafone Shared Services Romania had total revenues of EUR 39 million and over 1,070 employees last year, up from EUR 6.3 million and 150 employees in 2013. Takkar joined Vodafone in 1994 and has held a variety of senior roles in both Vodafone Group and Vodafone’s joint venture companies, including Enterprise Business Unit Director and Strategy Director of Vodafone India, Group Product Development Manager for Vodafone Live, Chief Technology Officer for Vizzavi and other operating roles in Vodafone Spain and Vodafone Portugal. He was a board member of Vodafone India and Indus Towers (a joint venture between Vodafone India, Airtel and Idea). Previous to his role of CEO and President of Vodafone Romania, he was CEO of Vodafone Partner Markets, being responsible to ensure business growth by expanding Vodafone’s footprint with the addition of new partners. Prior to joining Vodafone, he was a management consultant at DMR Group. Ravinder Takkar, 48 years old, US citizen, has a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.