Airtel’s data centre and cloud unit appoints Rajesh Tapadia as CEO

Telecommunications major Bharti Airtel-owned data centre and cloud business platform Nxtra Data has appointed Rajesh Tapadia as chief executive officer. 

Prior to joining the Gurugram-headquartered Nxtra Data, Tapadia served as senior executive vice-president, chief service officer and director at information technology solutions provider Netmagic Solutions. Part of his role in Netmagic Solutions entailed the management of data centre operations across cities and running critical technology infrastructure. 

Tapadia had also worked as chief operating officer of technology and managed services at Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services. 

In a career spanning over two decades, Tapadia has led cybersecurity and multi-cloud initiatives and has overseen the setting up of data centres across the country, according to a statement issued by Bharti Airtel. 

Airtel will leverage its portfolio of telecommunications services to capitalise on the data centre and cloud services segment, which is expected to become a $4 billion market by 2022, the statement said. 

“The data centre and cloud segment is an important pillar in our strategy to address enterprise customers’ evolving needs. We have already undertaken some very ambitious projects in this area and our ambition is to leverage our strengths to gain disproportionate share in this space,” said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, Bharti Airtel (India and South Asia). 

Nxtra Data was founded in 2013 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel. The company is a cloud service provider, which also offers services such as managed hosting, data back-up and remote infrastructure management. It operates 10 data centres across seven locations in Noida, Manesar, Mumbai, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru and Chennai. 

The appointment of Tapadia signifies another effort by Sunil Mittal-controlled Airtel’s bid to consolidate hold over the digital services segment in India. 

Last year, Bharti Airtel appointed Adarsh Nair as chief product officer to spearhead the telecom major’s digital product offerings. Nair was a former executive at American trucking software company Convoy.

Earlier this year, Cisco Systems and Bharti Airtel collaborated to provide connectivity solutions to enterprises and small businesses. The telecom company said it would leverage Cisco’s software solutions to run its audio and video-conferencing services. 

In a bid to step up its offerings in the frontier technology space, Bharti Airtel has reportedly been in talks with American telecom company Verizon to launch its own line of Internet of Things (IoT) services in India.