You’re reading it here first: Harish Gandhi, Vice-President (Value Added Services and New Product Development) for Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile operator, is set to join VC firm Canaan Partners. Gandhi has been with Airtel for almost two years, prior to which he was Director of Technology and Marketing with Nokia. He has an MBA from Wharton, and is an Electrical Engineer from IIT Bombay. Sources have informed ContentSutra that he will join sometime next month.
Canaan currently has one investment (of $5.25 Million) in the mobile space - Cellcast Asia Holdings - and having Gandhi on board at Canaan may it easier for the company to deal with Airtel - acknowledged in the industry as a difficult deal to crack. Gandhi will probably lead the mobile investments for Canaan, and this might also help Canaan attract more companies from the mobile sector; around a quarter of the VC firms new $650 Million fund has been earmarked for India and Israel.
A couple of other significant moves from the operator side this year: Anand Raman, VAS Head at Idea Cellular joined STAR India as VP for mobile entertainment, and Manoj Dawane, formerly COO for Uttaranchal and UP-West joined People Infocom (Mauj) as CEO.
