Bharti Airtel Lanka appoints Athula Dissanayake as Head of Sales

Bharti Airtel 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 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 one million customer milestone in the country.

With its network footprint panned out across the country and capturing strategic ranking positions in various areas in less than three years of operations, Airtel has emerged as Sri Lanka’s fastest expanding network. Registered under the Board of Investment in Sri Lanka, Airtel Lanka provides digital mobile services into Sri Lanka which includes voice telephony, voice mail, data services and GSM based services.  

The company has also received accreditations such as British Standards Institution’s ISO 27001:2005 and BS 25999-2:2007 for its continuous efforts towards information security and business continuity.

Athula Dissanayake, who  has earlier worked with Hutchison Telecommunications and Lanka Bell to now join 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 organisation, 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.  

At Lanka Bell where he served over nine years, Athula provided leadership to over 430 employees across the island covering the national sales division, dealer division, channel distribution and the customer care division. He was also instrumental behind the successful launch of the CDMA network as well as developing and re-launching of the retail – direct sales distribution network throughout the country.

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.