V.G Somasekhar, Airtel Uganda’s Managing Director has resigned his position as Managing Director, CEO East Africa Magazine has exclusively learnt.
Raghunath Venkateswarlu Mandava the Airtel Africa CEO, broke the news to all group staff in an email this afternoon.
In the email titled: “Resignation Of V.G Somasekhar: Managing Director – Uganda“, Mr. Raghu wrote: “VG Somasekhar (Soma), Managing Director of Airtel Uganda Limited has expressed his desire to move to India and as such resigned from his current job, but will be associated with the Bharti, Airtel Group on his return to India.
Somasekhar re-joined Airtel Africa in August 2017, after an earlier stint in Uganda between 2010 and 2014. Soma has helped build Airtel Uganda Limited into a strong brand and into the company that it is today. He has been instrumental in rolling out our 4G across the country and has demonstrated great maturity in dealing with all stakeholders and provided robust leadership to the team in Uganda. Whilst we will miss him, we thank him for his enormous contribution and wish him the very best in his future endeavours. His successor will be announced in due course.”
CEO East Africa Magazine, has learnt that he will remain in office until 31st March 2020.
Who is VG Somasekhar?
Bharti Airtel in December 2010 appointed V.G Somasekhar, then with over 15 years’ experience in telecoms to lead the Airtel Uganda operation, then the second biggest telecom company, albeit loss making. In April 2013, Somasekhar would lead the acquisition of equally loss-making Warid Telecom for a reported $120 million and the subsequent merger into a stronger No.2 with a turnover of UGX505 billion at end of 2013 versus MTN’s UGX1 trillion.
dfcu Bank Partners with Jubilee Health to Launch BlueCare Health Insurance SolutionSomasekhar then left in February 2014 and following some assignments within the Bharti Airtel Group, he returned in September 2017 to lead a now much bigger Airtel, then with nearly UGX1.16 trillion in turnover and UGX245 billion in net profit as at end of 2017. By end of 2018 Airtel’s turnover grew 5% from UGX1.16 trillion in 2017 to UGX1.21 trillion and net profit grew much healthier- an impressive 38%- from UGX245 billion to UGX338.1 billion ahead of MTN’s UGX220 billion on a gross UGX1.6 trillion in revenue, making Airtel, Uganda’s most profitable telecom company.
Somasekhar’s resignation comes as a surprise.
In a recent interview with CEO East Africa Magazine, he sounded upbeat about the future of the telecom industry in Uganda.
