Bharti Airtel names two new Kenya executives

Bharti Airtel has rehired one of its former rising stars to run Airtel Money after she spent a stint inside Safaricom’s M-Pesa product development team.

The mobile service firm also named a new finance director for its Kenyan operation, which saw a change in top leadership just six months ago. 

The company announced the appointment of Ms Topyster Muga, who leaves her job as a Vodafone manager, to run its mobile money service in Kenya.

Also coming aboard is new financial director Venkateshwaran ‘Venkat’ Ramakrishnan.

The two join a team helmed by Mr Adil El Youssefi, who was named managing director for the Kenyan unit in March, replacing Mr Shivan Bhargava.

Ms Muga rejoins Airtel from Vodafone Group Services Ltd in the United Kingdom where she was a principal product development manager for M-Pesa, the industry-leading mobile money service licensed to Airtel’s rival Safaricom.

Vodafone Group Services is a subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc, the ultimate holding company of Safaricom’s largest shareholder, Vodafone Kenya.

Muga left Airtel in 2011 after being awarded the Nelson Mandela scholarship to attend INSEAD, one of the world’s leading graduate business schools.

She had just joined Airtel Africa the year before as Senior Manager, Group Value Added Services. In the previous five years, she had held various roles information technology-related roles with Airtel Kenya.

Mr Ramakrishnan joined Airtel in India in 2006 as a Financial Reporting Manager. Prior to this, he worked for Vodafone in Banglore, India.

Speaking on the appointments, El Youssefi said: “I am delighted to have Topyster and Venkat join our leadership team. They both bring along unique individual qualities, diverse cross cultural and international experience that will add to the quality of our leadership team’s capability.”