Arun Sarin

Sarin received an honorary knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 10 March 2010.

In October 2009, Sarin was appointed as a senior advisor at the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR). He is currently an investor and adviser to a number of series B plus stage technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area and India.

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. Colao is paid a 975,000 pounds salary, compared with the 1.3 million pounds Sarin received at the end of March 2008, according to the group's annual report and accounts published.

Sarin was the former CEO of the telecom giant Vodafone Group plc, serving from 2003 until 2008. He was the driving force behind the Vodafone's strategic move into emerging markets, especially Asia and Africa, through the purchases of Turkish operator Telsim and a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar in India. He was a senior advisor at the private equity firm KKR. He also serves on the board of directors of Ola Cabs, Cisco Systems, Charles Schwab and Blackhawk Networks.

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.

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

Arun Sarin (born 21 October 1954) is an Indian-American telecommunications executive.

Sarin was born in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh, India, in 1954. He pursued his secondary education at the Bangalore Military School. Thereafter, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and graduated with a B.Tech. degree in metallurgical engineering in 1975. In 1978 he gained a MS in engineering and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.