Bharti Airtel, has appointed Suren Goonewardene as CEO for its operations in Sri Lanka. Airtel expects him to spearhead its long term goals in Sri Lanka through meaningful connections with our internal as well as external stakeholders including customers, industry bodies and government.

“Suren  brings  with  him  rich domain experience of telecom industry and has an exceptionally strong track record of business successes in  each  of  his  previous  roles.  Given Suren’s vast experience, sharp focus on business goals and able leadership”, said Sanjay Kapoor, CEO – India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel.

Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel that commenced commercial operations of services in Sri Lanka in January 2009, and grew to become the fastest operator to reach the 1 million customer milestone in the country.

Since then, Airtel has expanded its presence to 1500+ base stations across Sri Lanka and introduced a wide range of innovative service offerings towards enriching the lives of its customers. With over 242 million customers across 19 countries of its operations across Asia and Africa - Bharti Airtel is one of the world’s largest integrated elecommunications companies in the world today. The company is committed to driving the adoption of high speed 3G data services across its markets.

Suren  Goonewardene,  who  has earlier worked with Dialog Telekom and Lanka Bell to now join Airtel Sri Lanka as CEO, has over 16 years of work experience across areas of finance, sales, marketing and  operations.  At Dialog  Telekom - he  managed  the Fixed Telecom Services  and  Television  portfolio, and successfully drove the television business to market leadership position with Suren as Chief Operating Officer.

In his new role, Suren will report to Vineet Taneja, Operations Director – South & Sri Lanka at Bharti Airtel.