Bharti Airtel hires Yahoo's Anand Chandrasekaran as chief product officer

Bharti Airtel has roped in Yahoo's senior director of global search products, Anand Chandrasekaran, as its chief product officer, a newly created position at the nation's largest telecom operator.

The latest hiring underlines the company's increased focus on data services.

Chandrasekaran will lead product conceptualisation, design and development across the consumer business segment of the company. At Yahoo, he headed the fastest growing part of the search and commerce business unit for the Internet giant and was part of its search leadership team.

Confirming Chandrasekaran's appointment, Bharti said he will report to consumer business head Srinivasan Gopalan. "Anand will be responsible for ensuring the best-in-class user interface and experience across all current and future product offerings around the Internet ecosystem," a spokesperson said.

Anand Chandrasekaran has led product development, mobile revenues, consumer internet, search, maps, local and big data across several Fortune 500 companies. He had also co-founded and helped build Aeroprise, a company credited with creating the most-deployed mobility product worldwide for service management.

Chandrasekaran has also served as a venture adviser at Storm Ventures, a $500 million venture capital firm.