Bharti Airtel to rejig operations as income drops

Following a sharp drop in revenues, telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Thursday announced restructuring of its Indian and South Asian operations to streamline its businesses and reduce costs.

In a statement announcing the organisational changes, to be effective from 1 August, the company said the newly formed B2C (business-to-customer) unit will be headed by K Srinivas, who will look at all consumer facing businesses by combining the business units - mobile, telemedia, digital TV, and other emerging businesses like m-commerce.

The company had posted 31 per cent fall in its consolidated net income at Rs 1,400.7 crore for the quarter ended 31 March against Rs2,044.4 crore in the same quarter last year, due to acquisitions and rebranding costs and higher interest outgo.

Airtel's interest costs are also increasing after  paying for acquiring 3G and broadband wireless access spectrum in the auction last year, besides buying out Zain's African operations for $10.7 billion (See: Bharti acquires Zain, becomes world's fifth largest mobile operator).

Airtel's operations were earlier divided into four segments – mobile, enterprise, digital and telemedia. It will now focus on two sides – consumer and enterprise. These will be structured under two customer business units with focus on B2C and B2B (business to business) segments.

The B2C unit will again be divided into two - consumer business and market operations.