Airtel appoints Athula Dissanayake as Head of Sales

Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, today announced the appointment of Athula B. Dissanayake as Head of Sales of its operations in Sri Lanka.

Announcing the appointment, Suren Goonewardene, CEO/MD Bharti Airtel Lanka said, “Athula brings with him rich domain experience of telecom industry and has an exceptionally strong track record of business successes in each of his previous roles. Given Athula’s vast experience, sharp focus on business goals and able leadership - we are confident that his recruitment will enable us achieve our goals on our aggressive growth plans for the country.

"We welcome Athula to the Airtel family and look forward to him to take forward our business to the next level”

Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel that commenced commercial operations of services in Sri Lanka in January 2009, and grew to become the fastest operator to reach the 1 million customer milestone in the country.

Athula Dissanayake, who had earlier worked with Hutchison Telecommunications and Lanka Bell now joined Airtel Sri Lanka as Head of Sales, has over 20 years of work experience across areas of sales, distribution, promotions, pricing, growth and target management for the company as well as the pursuit of new business throughout the country.

At Hutchison Telecommunications, he managed the overall sales function where he provided strategic direction for the growth of the organization, ensured that planned sales objectives were achieved and assured that the employees remained motivated and acted as company brand ambassadors in line with the company values in all markets that they operated. Athula holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from the University of Delhi.

In his new role, Athula will report directly to the Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director, Bharti Airtel Lanka and will be part of Bharti Airtel Lanka’s Executive Committee.