Bharti restructures to reverse declining profits

Next month will see the enactment of a broad restructuring of one of India’s largest operators, Bharti Airtel. The firm is dividing its Indian and Southeast Asian operations to focus on consumer and business subscribers, assigning a vertical to each field.

The two verticals will be named business-2-consumers (B2C) and business-2-business (B2B), with former consisting of mobile, digital TV and other media operations while the latter will be geared towards carriers and corporates.

A statement from Bharti acknowledged that the restructuring could lead to job losses, noting: “We expect the natural attrition to take care of job redundancies that emerge as a result of this; we will try and manage the others through our ecosystem of group companies and partners.”

The move is likely an attempt by Bharti to reinvigorate its profits, which have fallen for the last five quarters as a result of expenses incurred by the firm moving into Africa. The B2B unit will be overseen by Drew Kelton, with K Srinivas taking the helm of the B2C unit.

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