Arun Sarin an India-born United States citizen, born in October 21, 1954 in Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh is the CEO of Vodafone Group Plc, the United Kingdom based global mobile operator.In 1975 Sarin, completed his B.Tech degree in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT-Kharagpur and later in 1978  he gained a Master in Science (Engineering) and a Masters in Business Administration from  Haas School of Business affiliated to University of California, at Berkeley in 1978.He started his career as a management consultant before moving, in 1984, to the Pacific Telesis Group in San Francisco.Arun Sarin has served in many executive positions in his 20 year career in telecommunications and following is the list of his executive positions in sequence:

*Director of AirTouch from July 1995

*President and Chief Operating Officer of AirTouch (February 1997- June1999)

*CEO for the Vodafone United States and Asia Pacific region until 15 April 2000 and then he became non-executive director.Being in this position he also served as  chief executive of Info Space(2000-01), and of Accel-KKR Telecom based in San Francisco(2001-03).

* Director of The Gap, Inc., The Charles Schwab Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc.

*Non-executive director to the Court of the Bank of England (effective from june 1, 2005) is for a fixed 3 year term.  

                          

                 He focused on emerging markets such as India, Turkey,and Romania instead of developed markets such as Japan and others. Under his leadership, Vodafone successfully bid U$11.1 billion for 67% stake in the Indian mobile operator,Hutchison Essar. Currently, Sarin is keeping himself busy focussing the company on total communications services including broadband, Internet and wireless data. Sarin will be retiring from Vodafone immediately after the company’s AGM on july 29, 2008 when he will be succeeded by current Deputy-CEO Vittorio Colao. He leaves the Vodafone post with a full-year profit of a whopping 6.6 billion pounds and Vodafone is reaping the rewards of its move into emerging markets like India, which has supported the company’s growth rate in an upright position.

Popularity: 8%