Airtel Payments Bank announced the appointment of Shashi Arora as the CEO and managing director of the company – replacing Manish Khera, who has decided to pursue his entrepreneurial journey.

Shashi Arora joined Bharti Airtel in February 2006 and was appointed as the CEO of Bharti Telemedia, which provides DTH services, in August 2011.

Under the leadership of Shashi Arora, Airtel’s DTH business has doubled its subscriber base as well as revenues, with over two-third of the new customers coming from rural India.

Prior to this, Shashi Arora was part of Airtel’s mobile business, and served as CEO of the Upper North cluster (Punjab, Haryana, HP and J&K) as well as CEO of the Delhi circle.

Airtel Payments Bank will start rolling out its banking network in the second quarter of the current financial year.

Airtel Payments Bank currently provides money transfer services and semi-closed wallet services (Airtel Money). The company has presence in 800 plus towns across India. The company plans to leverage Airtel’s distribution network with 1.5 million outlets with presence in 5,126 census and 464,361 non-census towns and villages in India.