Ravi Bhatia returns to head Primus Australia

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 11 March 2007 14:24

IT People - People

Ravi Bhatia has been appointed managing director of Primus Australia after serving as president of Primus' US operations for the last 18 months and 12 years after becoming the first employee and managing director of Primus Australia in 1995. He replace Greg Wilson who has resigned.

The changes follow release of the parent company's full year results last week in which chairman and CEO, K Paul Singh, said: "The revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance of our Australia franchise fell well short of expectations in 2006 largely due to reduced margin on select services caused by Telstra's anti-competitive wholesale pricing actions, delays in regulatory enforcement actions to curb such excesses, as well as less effective marketing campaigns in the second half."

Primus entered the Australian market in 1996 by acquiring Axicorp, then Australia's largest reseller of telephone services. Bhatia had previously been sales and marketing director of MCI for its South Pacific region. Primus had been founded in 1995 by former MCI executive K Paul Singh and was led by a number of former senior MCI employees. Singh is still running the company.

Bhatia left Primus after six years to become executive chairman of Virtual Communities. He then went on to become chairman of Access Providers, a role he held until early in 2006.