A close friend of mine - let’s call him Pandit, started his career as a zonal sales manager at Airtel.
And for a brief while, he was the most powerful person I knew.
This was around a decade ago when India’s telecom revolution was accelerating. Jio still hadn’t shown up. And while most of us newly minted MBA peers pretended that we did important things at our workplaces (we mostly filled excel sheets), Pandit was different.
He had real power. Every major mobile phone dealer, seller, and vendor in his city knew and feared him. He could carelessly walk up to any kirana (mom-and-pop) store and add prepaid credit to any phone instantly. They all had sales targets. For SIM cards, recharges, and connections. And if they couldn’t meet them, they’d get a call from Pandit
The reason Karthik, and others like him, had this kind of power was because of Airtel’s corporate structure. The telco has a federated structure of telecom circles—22 in India—nearly each with a CEO. And each circle operates like a local fiefdom that handles pricing, product, vendor management, network deployment, marketing, and customer support within its geography. That’s what gives circle CEOs power and influence, with annual salaries up to a cool Rs 2.5 crore ($306,000). However, all that’s changing now, In today’s article, reports how there’s a big exodus of circle CEOs from Airtel.
Remember that these circle CEOs and executives are the veterans of the great telecom war that Airtel fought with Jio for nearly half a decade. And today, many of them are deciding that it’s not worth staying put any longer. Some of them are going to Jio. Others to Africa. And a big reason why this is happening is simply that Airtel now believes the local model doesn’t work so well and is choosing a more centralised approach.
But there are other reasons too.
Today’s story is a fascinating case study in organizational strategy and structure that’s currently underway at one of India’s biggest telecom companies. It’s a story that cuts across Airtel, Jio, and the telecom industry, with lessons for any company, in any sector.
