Virtual team set to look after ATC-Viom combine’s operations, legal merger may take over a year to close

MUMBAI: A virtual team has been set up to run the American Tower Corp. and Viom Networks combine in India even as the legal merger of the two telecom tower operators could take over a year to close, with Ashwani Khillan and Sudhir Prasad remaining at the helm as joint chief operating officers.

“The top 50 positions have been identified. Work is on to further assign roles to staff synergistically across both entities,” an ATC spokeswoman said. “Of course, this is a virtual team till such time as the legal merger is completed.”

Khillan has been in ATC for the past year, after resigning as chief technology officer at Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which operated the MTS brand. He will control construction, maintenance and servicing functions of the over 56,000 towers of the two entities, virtually like an operational head. This is Khillan’s second stint at ATC and he will also oversee expansion, including identifying sites to build towers.

Prasad was second in command to Viom chief executive officer Syed Safawi, who has resigned. Given that the bulk of the towers are from Viom, he will handle sales, commercial and internal technology initiatives. He is also entrusted with the technology, process and cultural amalgamation of Viom into ATC.



In April, the government cleared Bostonbased ATC’s acquisition of a 51% stake in Viom, valuing the Tata group company at about `21,000 crore and marking the biggest flow of foreign funds into the country in a year. Once the legal merger is complete, ATC will own 51% of Viom and 100% of ATC India. Subsequently, the two entities will be merged, after which ATC will own 65% of its Indian unit, Tata Teleservices will have 26% and the rest will be held by IDFC and Macquarie.

Viom is the bigger entity, with some 42,000 towers, compared with ATC’s 14,000. That’s led to some murmurs of discontent among Viom executives about the senior management structure being dominated by ATC officials, said a person familiar with the developments.

Among the top 50 positions, 60% have been assigned to ATC incumbents. Of the 17 circles proposed by ATC, 12 will be led by former ATC employees and three of the four regions planned will be headed by ATC executives.

Like the two COOs, three other officials will report to the ATC India board headed by Amit Sharma. Vijay Agarwal will be in charge of finance. The incumbent chief financial officer at ATC, has been with the company for over five years, after he left Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages. Prior to that, he was Karnataka chief financial officer at Bharti Airtel.

The legal function will be headed by Sudip Gupta, who has served in this position at ATC for four years. He also had stints with ESPN Star Sports and British Telecom. At present he holds an Asia-level position, but with an expanded tower portfolio in India after the merger, he would largely be focussing here.

Human resources will be headed by another ATC incumbent, Pankaj Mittal. He has been with ATC for a year and a half. ATC has also carved out an internal audit role that will report to ATC global senior vice president for internal audit and the chief risk officer. Handling this will be Samir Sethi from the Viom finance team. ATC has divided the country into four regions, each with its own head and a profitand-loss book.