Bharti Airtel picks Suren Goonewardene as CEO - Sri Lanka

Announcing the appointment, Sanjay Kapoor, CEO ' India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel said, "Suren brings with him rich domain experience of telecom industry and has an exceptionally strong track record of business successes in each of his previous roles. Given Suren's vast experience, sharp focus on business goals and able leadership - we are confident that Airtel's Sri Lanka team will move from strength to strength and deliver on our aggressive growth plans for the country. We welcome Suren to the Airtel family and look forward to him spearheading our long term goals in Sri Lanka through meaningful connections with our internal as well as external stakeholders including customers, industry bodies and government."

Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel that commenced commercial operations of services in Sri Lanka in January 2009, and grew to become the fastest operator to reach the 1 million customer milestone in the country. Since then, Airtel has expanded its presence to 1500+ base stations across Sri Lanka and introduced a wide range of innovative service offerings towards enriching the lives of its customers. With over 242 million customers across 19 countries of its operations across Asia and Africa - Bharti Airtel is one of the world's largest integrated telecommunications companies in the world today. The company is committed to driving the adoption of high speed 3G data services across its markets.

Suren Goonewardene, who has earlier worked with Dialog Telekom and Lanka Bell to now join Airtel Sri Lanka as CEO, has over 16 years of work experience across areas of finance, sales, marketing and operations. At Dialog Telekom - he managed the Fixed Telecom Services and Television portfolio, and successfully drove the television business to market leadership position with Suren as Chief Operating Officer.

Previously, Suren also held the position of Managing Director at Bell Lanka, where he played an eminent role in building and commissioning an island-wide fixed wireless network. His contribution at Bell Lanka was significant towards driving the company's market leadership position in CDMA technology and driving the company's growth chart from a small telco to becoming the country's second largest fixed line operator.

Suren holds a degree in Business Accounting from Monash University in Australia and is a member of the Certified Practicing Accountants of Australian. He also holds a Graduate Diploma in Marketing from Chartered Institute of Marketing in UK.

In his new role, Suren will report to Vineet Taneja, Operations Director ' South & Sri Lanka at Bharti Airtel.