As many as eight Indian-origin persons, including those working with Tatas and Bharti group, have been named among 40 young leaders of the global telecom industry.
Indians featured in the '40 under 40' list by Global Telecoms Business (GTB), a telecommunications magazine, include Srinivasa Addepalli of Tata Communications, Pankaj Agrawal (Aircel), Ajay Chitkara (Bharti Airtel), Gauri Raizada (Tata Teleservices) and Rene Meza (Airtel Kenya), Mukesh Bavisi (Exponential-e), Udit Mehrotra (Shyam Networks) and Upendra Poranki (Nokia Siemens Networks).
The last year's list had only one Indian – Srinivasa Addepalli.
On Srinivasa Addepalli, GTB said that he "embodies the spirit of adventure that Tata Communications represents. Addepalli has played a pivotal role in this journey as the cocreator and enabler of the company's unique strategy."
Regarding Agrawal GTB said that he played a key role in transforming Aircel from a regional operator to a pan-Indian operator, while Ajay Chitkara has been the "catalyst to build a business from scratch to a USD 450 million operation today."
Chitkara is one of the youngest CEOs at Bharti Airtel and in the Indian telecom industry.
The magazine said that Rene Meza has done an "outstanding job" in the development of telecommunications in east Africa.
The coveted list also include Batelco's Enas Al Fardan, France Telecom Orange's Christophe Alter, BT Global Services' Sian Baldwin, Julien Ducarroz of Orange, Alcatel-Lucent's Heather Kirksey, Mikhail Gerchuk of MTS, Vodafone's Bryan Littlefair.
For the study, respondents were asked who they thought are the global telecom industry's "young leaders of today and the leaders of tomorrow".
