New mobile gambling chief for Betfair

Reports earlier this week that Betfair was suffering an exodus of middle managers has been followed by an announcement that assures the market that the company is hiring replacements.

The first of these, Raj Vemulapalli, has been appointed as Vice President of Mobile Engineering.

Until recently Head of Engineering and one of the founding members for Yahoo!’s Real Time Communications division, Vemulapalli will be responsible for driving Betfair’s mobile strategy, developing innovative mobile products and building Betfair’s new mobile centre in Silicon Valley.

Over 11 years at Yahoo!, the new mobile chief pioneered the development of some of the most used products in the world including Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mobile Messaging, Mobile Voice and Video, Yahoo! Chat as well as several communications platforms.

He led Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mobile Messenger to 280 million monthly active users and $150 million in annual revenues, presented numerous papers, and filed six patents on real time messaging.

Commenting on his appointment, Vemulapalli said “Betfair is a technology company that invented the betting exchange a decade ago and is now reinventing mobile betting and gaming. I am excited to be driving Betfair’s mobile strategy, products and platforms at a time when consumers are increasingly turning to mobile.”

Tony McAlister, chief technology officer at Betfair, added: “Mobile is a hugely important channel for us and I am delighted that Raj has decided to join Betfair at a time where there is a real opportunity to reinforce our market leading position in the mobile space. Raj has a track record of delivering global products, building teams and has experience managing open API’s, a development route which is significant to our mobile strategy going forward.”