iWorld
Adarsh Nair appointed chief product officer of Bharti Airtel
MUMBAI: According to an Economic Times report, Adarsh Nair has been appointed as Bharti Airtel’s new chief product officer (CPO). Before this, Nair was the head, product and growth of US-based trucking start-up Convoy Inc. Now at Bharti Airtel, Nair will report to the company’s CEO Gopal Vittal.
The CPO position at Bharti Airtel has been vacant since the previous product head Anand Chandrasekharan quit to join Snapdeal three years ago.
Speaking to ET, a top company executive said that Nair will be “custodian of Bharti Airtel’s digital products and platforms” and work closely with the leadership team and partners to identify and prioritise market opportunities.
Another top executive at Airtel said that the products head position had now evolved and taken on a much more strategic role. Chiefly, since the telco decided to evolve into a digital company as part of its Airtel 3.0 vision, Airtel would be deploying new age technologies and this is where the products head would come into play.
With Airtel’s ongoing digital transformation, the CPO leadership position is reviving, said the executive.
iWorld
Telcos push for unified rules as spam shifts to OTT platforms
Over 80 per cent fraud moves online, operators seek common framework.
MUMBAI: The spam may have left your phone network but it hasn’t left you alone. India’s telecom operators are once again dialling up the pressure for a unified regulatory framework, warning that fraud is rapidly migrating to internet-based platforms where oversight remains far looser. According to industry communication, a leading operator has written to multiple arms of the government including the Department of Telecommunications, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance arguing that tighter controls on traditional telecom networks are inadvertently pushing bad actors towards over-the-top (OTT) communication platforms.
The concern is not new, but the framing has sharpened. What was once an industry grievance is now being positioned as a consumer protection issue. Operators say that tackling spam in silos no longer works, as fraudsters seamlessly shift across platforms, exploiting regulatory gaps. The result: a moving target that traditional safeguards struggle to contain.
Executives point to a clear shift in fraud patterns. OTT platforms are increasingly being used for phishing links, impersonation scams and bulk unsolicited messaging, with industry estimates suggesting that over 80 per cent of spam activity has now migrated online. In this environment, the lines between telecom networks, messaging apps and financial fraud are blurring fast.
At the heart of the industry’s demand is a call for a technology-neutral regulatory framework, one that applies consistently across telecom and internet-based communication services. Operators argue that the absence of uniform safeguards, such as sender verification systems, robust spam filters and clearly defined accountability mechanisms, has created enforcement blind spots that fraudsters are quick to exploit.
The proposal is straightforward but far-reaching. Telcos are pushing for baseline anti-fraud measures across all communication platforms, alongside faster response systems and deeper coordination between ministries. Given the interconnected nature of telecom networks, digital platforms and financial systems, they argue that fragmented oversight only weakens the overall defence.
The broader issue is regulatory arbitrage, the ability of bad actors to hop between platforms based on which is least regulated at any given time. Without harmonised rules, operators say, efforts to curb fraud risk becoming a game of whack-a-mole.
As digital communication continues to expand, the debate is shifting from who regulates what to how consistently it is regulated. For now, telecom operators are making their case clear: in a world where spam travels freely, regulation cannot afford to stay fragmented.
