Sharad Sriwastawa was appointed in 2023 as co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Rakuten Mobile and President of Rakuten Symphony, a Rakuten Mobile company spearheading the global adoption of cloud-native Open Radio Access Network infrastructure and services. He was appointed Senior Executive Managing Officer for Rakuten Group in 2022 and Group Senior Managing Executive Officer in 2024.

Sharad first joined Rakuten in 2018 to lead the deployment of Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest and most modern mobile network. Sharad’s stewardship is central to the overall management of Rakuten Mobile’s network divisions in Japan where he leads optimized network operations and drives growth of Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network.

He is also a leading industry voice for driving innovation and adoption of next-generation cloud-native and autonomous Open RAN wireless networks.

With over three decades of experience in the telecommunications industry, Sharad has held global executive roles, including in India, the Middle East, Australia, the United States of America, and Asia, working with major mobile operators and vendors such as Reliance Jio, T-Mobile, Telstra, Siemens, and RAN technology vendor, Airspan Networks.