Arun Sarin (born 21 October 1954) is an

Indian-American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

telecommunications executive. Sarin was the former CEO of the telecom giant

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

, serving from 2003 until 2008. He drove the integration of Vodafone, Airtouch and Mannesman. He was also the driving force behind the Vodafone's strategic move into emerging markets, especially Asia and Africa, through the purchases of Turkish operator Telsim and a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar in India. He was a senior advisor at the private equity firm KKR. He also serves on the board of directors of

Ola Cabs Ola Cabs (stylized as OLΛ) is an Indian multinational ridesharing company, headquartered in Bangalore. It also operates in other business verticals including financial services and cloud kitchens. A variety of venture capitalists including ...

, Charles Schwab and Accenture. He is currently Chairman of Cerence, a conversational AI public company. Sarin received an honorary knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 10 March 2010.

Early life and education

Sarin was born in

Pachmarhi Pachmarhi is a hill station in Narmadapuram district of Madhya Pradesh states and territories of India, state of central India. It has been the location of a cantonment (Pachmarhi Cantonment) since British Raj. It is widely known as ''Satpura ...

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

, India, in 1954. He pursued his secondary education at the Bangalore Military School. Thereafter, he joined the

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) is a public institute of technology established by the Government of India in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. Established in 1951, the institute is the first of the IITs to be established ...

and graduated with a B.Tech. degree in metallurgical engineering in 1975. In 1978, he gained a MS in engineering and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from the

Haas School of Business The Walter A. Haas School of Business, also known as Berkeley Haas, is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a public university i ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Career

Early career and AirTouch (1984 - 1999)

He started his career as a management consultant before moving in 1984 to Pacific Telesis Group in San Francisco. He was a director of

AirTouch AirTouch Communications was an American wireless telephone service provider, created as a spin-off on Pacific Telesis on April 1, 1994. Its headquarters were in One California in the Financial District, San Francisco, California. After a series ...

from July 1995 and was President and Chief Operating Officer from February 1997.

Vodafone (1999 - 2008)

AirTouch was sold to Vodafone in 1999 for about $75 billion. He was then appointed Vodafone's

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

for the United States and

Asia Pacific region Asia Pacific Region can refer to: * Asia-Pacific * WOSM-Asia-Pacific Region * WAGGGS-Asia Pacific Region * Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC ) is an inter-governmental forum for 21 member economy, e ...

until 15 April 2000, when Vodafone's U.S. interests were merged into

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

. He subsequently became chief executive of

InfoSpace Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and Met ...

in 2000 and of Accel-KKR Telecom based in San Francisco from 2001 to 2003, while serving as a

non-executive director A non-executive director (abbreviated to non-exec, NED or NXD), independent director or external director is a member of the board of directors of a corporation, such as a company, cooperative or non-government organization, but not a member of th ...

of Vodafone. He rejoined Vodafone as Chief Executive Designate on 1 April 2003 and was appointed on a permanent basis after the Company's annual general meeting on 30 July 2003. On 27 May 2008, he announced his resignation (effective July) as CEO after Vodafone achieved record earnings. During his tenure as Chief Executive of Vodafone group plc, he expanded the company geographically into countries like

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

etc. increasing the customer base to approximately 300 million. He expanded the product line of the company to include data, internet and broadband services. He streamlined the operations of the company under the Vodafone brand to utilize the global scale while maintaining local customer focus. He increased the dividends per share by 400 percent and returned value to shareholders through buybacks. Sarin retired from Vodafone immediately after the company's annual general meeting on 29 July 2008, and was succeeded by then Deputy-CEO Vittorio Colao.

After Vodafone (2008 to present)

In October 2009, Sarin was appointed as a senior advisor at the private equity firm KKR. He has been a member of the advisory board of Accel KKR from 2010 until 2019. He is currently an investor and adviser to a number of early stage technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area and India.

Board

He serves on the board of directors of

, Accenture and Charles Schwab. He is the Chairman of Cerence, a conversational AI public company, spun out by Nuance, in October 2019. He also sits on the board of trustees for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarin, Arun 1954 births Living people Indian emigrants to the United States American technology chief executives American people of Indian descent UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Vodafone people IIT Kharagpur alumni American people of Punjabi descent Haas School of Business alumni People from Pachmarhi Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire