Airtel appoints former NASA executive as Chief Data Scientist

India’s leading telecom operator, Airtel has appointed Santanu Bhattacharya as the Chief Data Scientist. He has been hired to expedite the integration of developing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

In his new role, Bhattacharya will be responsible for leveraging data science and deep analytics to recognize the unique needs of customers to innovate and develop new products and services at Airtel. He will be based out of Bengaluru and report to Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO & Head of Digital at Bharti Airtel.

On his appointment, Harmeen Mehta was quoted in media saying, "We are pleased to have Santanu onboard with us as we transform Airtel into a truly digital organization and start using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to solve real business problems." said Mehta.

Before joining Airtel, Bhattacharya was working with MITLab Media. He was named as the Senior Vice- President- Data, Technology and Product at Delhivery in 2015. He was also leading the mobile products in emerging markets like India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. He's also had stints at NASA and AOL and co-founded a social media analytics company Salorix in 2009.