Arun Sarin

He started his career as a management consultant before moving in 1984 to Pacific Telesis Group in San Francisco.^[2] He was a director of AirTouch from July 1995 and was President and Chief Operating Officer from February 1997.^[2]

AirTouch was sold to Vodafone in 1999 for about $75 billion. He was then appointed Vodafone's chief executive officer for the United States and Asia Pacific region until 15 April 2000, when Vodafone's U.S. interests were merged into Verizon Wireless. He subsequently became chief executive of InfoSpace in 2000 and of Accel-KKR Telecom based in San Francisco from 2001 to 2003, while serving as a non-executive director of Vodafone. He rejoined Vodafone as chief executive designate on 1 April 2003 and was appointed on a permanent basis after the company's annual general meeting on 30 July 2003. On 27 May 2008, he announced his resignation (effective July) as CEO after Vodafone achieved record earnings.^{[citation needed]}

During his tenure as chief executive of Vodafone group plc, he expanded the company geographically into countries like India, Turkey, South Africa etc. increasing the customer base to approximately 300 million. He expanded the product line of the company to include data, internet and broadband services. He streamlined the operations of the company under the Vodafone brand to utilize the global scale while maintaining local customer focus. He increased the dividends per share by 400 percent and returned value to shareholders through buybacks.^{[citation needed]}

Sarin retired from Vodafone immediately after the company's annual general meeting on 29 July 2008, and was succeeded by then deputy-CEO Vittorio Colao.^[4][5]

In October 2009, Sarin was appointed as a senior advisor at the private equity firm KKR.^[6] He has been a member of the advisory board of Accel KKR from 2010 until 2019. He is currently an investor and adviser to a number of early stage technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area and India.

He serves on the board of directors of Ola Electric ,^[7] Accenture^[8] and Charles Schwab. He also sits on the board of trustees for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.^[9]