Vishant Vora quits as CTO of Vodafone Idea

by | Oct 15, 2020 | Telecom

With the 5G era at doorsteps, the exit of VI's most experienced technology executive can hurt its comeback prospects in the India market
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Vishant Vora, the Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone Idea (VI), has resigned from his position. According to media reports, his last day at the office will be 31 October 2020.

Vishant took over this role on 31 August 2018 and played a crucial role in leading networks, IT operations, and the overall technology strategy of VI. Vishant has been associated with the Vodafone group since December 2019 and has led several transformational initiatives across three continents – USA, Europe, and Asia.

Under Vishant’s leadership, Vodafone Idea recently completed the first phase of the deployment of Nokia’s Dynamic Spectrum Refarming (DSR) in India. He also led VI’s deployment of 12,000 multiple-input and multiple outputs (ma-MiMos) that helped VI to manage the data surge on its network during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The development has come just after the formal completion of Vodafone-Idea’s network integration. Vodafone Idea had recently unveiled a new brand identity ‘Vi’ as part of its consolidation efforts to integrate the two brands: Vodafone and Idea formally.

Vodafone’s Indian arm and Idea Cellular had amalgamated their operations in August 2018 to survive in the highly competitive Indian telecommunication market.

Industry onlookers believe that Vishant’s exit can hurt VI’s efforts to make a comeback in the Indian market and its 5G rollout plans since it would be difficult to substitute the technical-knowledge of Vishant.

Vodafone and Idea together had over 400 million customers when their merger was announced. The combined subscriber base of VIL had shrunk to around 300 million by April 2020.

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