Gopal Vittal is the Managing Director and the Chief Executive Officer (India & South Asia) of Bharti Airtel Limited. Bharti Airtel is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company with operations in 20 countries.
Gopal began his career in 1990 by joining Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL). He worked at HUL for over 20 years.
At HUL, Vittal did two stints as an Area Sales Manager and worked in Brooke Bond and several skincare brands.
In 2006, Sunil Mittal, (founder and group CEO of Bharti Enterprises) invited Vittal to join Bharti Airtel as the head of marketing. He then worked only for 2 years, and later was persuaded to return to HUL by its CEO, Nitin Paranjpe.
For a brief stint of 2 years(2006-2008) at Airtel, he redefined the relationship between operations and marketing in the organization and changed Bharti's marketing strategy to cater to the mass market.
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After rejoining HUL in 2008, Gopal was reappointed as head of the home and personal care (HPC) businesses and given a board seat, superseding several company executives.
During Vittal's tenure at HUL, the HPC businesses grew at a compounded annual rate of 14.7%.
In 2012, Vittal left the HUL and re-joined Bharti Airtel, as a Director in charge of special projects and international business strategy.
Within a year of Gopal Vittal's rejoining, in 2013, Airtel announced that Vittal would be the next CEO of Airtel India. Subsequently, he became the CEO on 1 March 2013.
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Vittal did his schooling at Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh and is an alumnus of Madras Christian College. He further completed his MBA from IIM, Kolkata
