In line with its target to ramp up its subscriber base to 8-10 million in the next fiscal and provide better customer care service, Tata Teleservices has inducted three key management personnel from the Tata Group and one from Telstra, Australia, and bifurcated its marketing and customer care divisions.
The company has appointed Jehangir Ardeshir as president (customer care) while Harish Bhat would be the president (marketing), TTSL chairman Firdose Vandrevala said on Monday.
The current president (marketing) Amit Bose would look after corporate affairs, including business planning and processing.
The former managing director of Tata Honeywell, Vinayak Deshpande would be president (operations) looking after south and western regions while the current president (operations), Ajay Pande would look after north and east.
Greg Young from Telstra, Australia, would be the chief of network operations and value-added services. Ardeshir is presently the CEO of Tata TQM and Harish Bhat is the CEO of Tanishq.
On funding of the company, Tata Industries managing director Kishor Chaukar said TTSL has committed about Rs 14,000 crore (Rs 140 billion) till now and would spend Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) in two-three years.
The money is raised through 50 per cent debt and the rest is equity, which has been underwritten by the Tata Group and "there is no shortage of funds".
The company has separated the customer care division from marketing to provide better customer care and to sort out existing problems of billing and other issues.
It would double its network to 1,000 towns by March 2005 and would have a pan-India presence enabling country-wide roaming. TTSL, which currently has subscriber base of 2.5 million, is targeting to increase it to 8-10 million customers in the next fiscal.
"We have added about three lakh customers in the last month and two lakh by the middle of the current month," Vandrevala said.
