Former MTN Zambia CEO to head up Enterprise Business at MTN Group

The MTN Group has appointed Farhad Khan as Executive for its Enterprise Business division, effective 1 July.

Khan, former Chief Executive Officer of MTN Zambia, will head up the newly created portfolio, reporting into the Group Chief Commercial Officer, Christian de Faria. The appointment of an internal candidate to such a critical function speaks to the richness of MTN's leadership pipeline, which is underpinned by a deliberate talent investment strategy to address current and future needs of the MTN business.

Khan's appointment is integral to the group's plans to source incremental revenue from ICT business services into the future.

“MTN has rolled out a number of initiatives in the last 18 months, in line with our ICT strategy. However, we have identified that we can achieve more through improved co-ordination. As a result, we believe that our enterprise and ICT focus as a group would be enhanced by a central execution function,” says Christian de Faria, Group Chief Commercial Officer, MTN Group.

In line with this focus, some of the structural changes introduced include an Enterprise segment focus with standalone profit and loss, and targets on new ICT revenue streams. The Enterprise segment will drive the organisation-wide ambition, capture economies of scale and maximise cross-country revenue opportunities. It will also create and align the enterprise teams across all operations to ensure that the focus placed on Enterprise is consistent and efficient.

“It will also create and align the enterprise teams across all operations to ensure that the focus placed on Enterprise is consistent and efficient. The appointment of Farhad (Khan) is integral to these changes, particularly the need to gain traction on the new business lines,” adds De Faria.

In his new role, Khan will be responsible for the implementation of an Enterprise strategy and structure across all MTN operations. He is also tasked with the responsibility of creating and implementing a global account management framework between the Group and its respective operations.

As CEO of MTN Zambia, Khan and his team were responsible for the turnaround of the business operation, growing its market share from 20% to almost 38% in less than three years. In the same period, MTN Zambia grew subscribers from 700 000 to 2.5 million, and improved operating profit by 300%.

Khan is not new to the ICT and Enterprise Segment environment. He joined MTN in 2003 as General Manager for the Business segment in the MTN SA Marketing department. In this role, he oversaw the successful launch of BlackBerry in South Africa, as well as the creation of the partner environment for data and connectivity. In 2005, he was part of the core team deployed to Iran, tasked with setting up operations in his role as Executive for Marketing and Customer Relations.

In 2008, when MTN Group acquired the Verizon Africa operations, Farhad led the integration of Verizon into MTN SA operations, overseeing aspects such as ISP, HR, processes, technology and culture.

Before joining MTN, he held senior management roles at Accenture, Nokia and Telkom SA.

* Issued by MTN Group Corporate Affairs