Bharti Airtel’s Payments Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Shashi Arora has quit. In normal circumstances, this would have been just another top CEO exiting. But the circumstances under which he has left have generated much discussions.
Arora has been working with Airtel in senior leadership roles since 2006. He was appointed MD and CEO of Airtel Payments Bank on June 1, 2016.
Under his leadership, the DTH business had doubled its subscriber base as well as revenue, with over two-third of the new customers coming from rural India.
While Arora and the company said he has resigned on his own two weeks ago, sources say he has been removed from his roles because of the last few days’ controversy on the process adopted to open payments bank accounts without subscribers ‘informed consent’. This had led the Unique Identification Authority (UIDAI) to take action.
Shashi Arora resigned in the wake of the firm's eKYC licence suspension by Aadhaar-issuing body UIDAI.
In its allegations, the UIDAI had temporarily barred Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank from conducting Aadhaar-based SIM verification of mobile customers using e-KYC process as well as e-KYC of payments bank clients.
As per the allegations, the company was using the Aadhaar-eKYC based SIM verification process to open payments bank accounts of its subscribers without their ‘informed consent’.
Queried whether he was asked to leave by the company, owing to the allegations from UIDAI, Arora said that it was not true and his decision on resigning from the company was on work for long.
“I quit a couple of weeks ago and I am on notice period till January 31. I will be joining a non-financial-non-banking industry post that. I have been serving notice period and incidentally I will be completing 12 years with the company on January 31,” Arora said.
