Gopal Vittal, the CEO who helped Airtel take on Jio juggernaut

watch when he was hired from Hindustan Unilever, India's top packaged consumer goods company, to run marketing for Airtel in 2006.

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That stint lasted just two years with Vittal returning to Unilever where he had built his career from 1990 after graduating from Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta.The beginning of the 2010s was also about the time Mittal saw the writing on the wall. He had just completed a $10.7 billion acquisition in Africa and knew the missing piece in his jigsaw for growth was his leadership. He took over two years to clear the decks for Vittal's return as director of special projects in 2012. Trusted lieutenant Manoj Kohli was sent to run the Africa business and CEO Sanjay Kapoor left in 2013.

Vittal took the corner office on 1 March 2013.

That was about the time the air was thick with expectation that Ambani was going to make the biggest splash in telecom history in India. It took long months of preparation but Mittal and Vittal were ready. The latter captured the bruising years ahead in his letter in the FY17 Airtel annual report. “As we look ahead, we expect an exciting but turbulent year—consolidation will continue and the new entrant will continue to disrupt the market. Internally, we view this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to grow market share...We are determined to drive this change despite the competitive headwinds,” he wrote. Ambani's Reliance Industries had launched Reliance Jio in September 2016.

No one could have guessed how severely the sector would get upended over the few years. The new entrant's pricing-led blitzkrieg forced rivals to drop their charges too. Consumers rejoiced but the companies folded up one by one. Reliance Communications and Aircel folded up. Vodafone India that had a strong presence in cities and the rural-dominant Idea Cellular merged. And the industry was left with three players: Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, besides state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which was even then an also-ran.