India's telecom operator Airtel has appointed Santanu Bhattacharya as the Chief Data Scientist who would drive the company's digital innovation lab. Bhattacharya is hired to expedite the integration of developing technologies such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. He will be based out of Bengaluru and report to Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO & Head of Digital at Bharti Airtel. Bhattacharya will be responsible for leveraging data science and deep analytics to recognize the unique needs of customers to innovate and develop new products and services at Airtel. Prior to joining Airtel, Bhattacharya worked with MITLab Media. He's also had stints at NASA and AOL and co-founded a social media analytics company Salorix in 2009.