Vodafone India CEO Marten Pieters, who steered the company for six eventful years, stepped down on Tuesday. He will be replaced by Sunil Sood. Pieters, who continues on the company’s board as a non-executive director, was known to speak his mind. Soon after the BJP government assumed office, he said that doing business in India was a difficult proposition.
He reiterated the view on his last day in office, pointing out that Vodafone had paid the government R75,000 crore in the last five years but had given shareholders nothing. Pieters said the mandatory partial payment for the recently concluded spectrum auctions had been made but argued that while stronger companies like his would survive, they would be left with little to invest in network expansion.
Pieters, who took charge as India CEO and MD in February 2009 from Asim Ghosh, took the company to greater heights, making it the second-largest mobile operator in the country by revenue and subscriber base. During his tenure, the company doubled its revenue, added over 100 million customers, increased market share and launched data services, currently used by over 57 million people. The company’s total revenue, which stood at around R20,000 crore then, doubled to over R40,000 crore, while the Ebitda moved from mid-20% to over 30%.