Dig­i­cel Group has an­nounced Marce­lo Catal­do as its new group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, ef­fec­tive May,1.

Dig­i­cel yes­ter­day said Catal­do, orig­i­nal­ly from Paraguay, has di­verse in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence hav­ing worked across Latin Amer­i­ca, the US, and Eu­rope. He joined Dig­i­cel from Ti­go Colom­bia where he has served as CEO and Pres­i­dent since Au­gust 2016.

“On his watch, the com­pa­ny de­liv­ered com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices to 16 mil­lion cus­tomers in Colom­bia and is on a strong growth tra­jec­to­ry, with its post­paid base up by 21 per­cent and its cor­po­rate dig­i­tal ser­vices up by al­most 35 per cent last year,” Dig­i­cel said in a news re­lease,.

Catal­do takes over from Maarten Boute who has served as in­ter­im Group CEO since the com­ple­tion of the re­struc­tur­ing in Jan­u­ary and who will re­turn to his role as group chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer (COO).

Com­ment­ing on the new CEO, the group’s chair­man Ra­jeev Suri, said; “I am thrilled to wel­come Marce­lo to the Dig­i­cel team. His in­cred­i­ble en­er­gy, in­dus­try in­sight, and com­mer­cial acu­men, cou­pled with his ex­ten­sive in­ter­na­tion­al track record, po­si­tion him per­fect­ly to lead us in­to our next growth phase.”

He con­tin­ued, “As we wel­come Marce­lo, I would al­so like to thank Maarten Boute, Dig­i­cel Group COO, for his ex­cel­lent work as in­ter­im Group CEO. Maarten is a very strong op­er­a­tor and a Dig­i­cel stal­wart. To­geth­er Marce­lo and Maarten will be a force to be reck­oned with. I wish them both every suc­cess.”

Com­ment­ing on his ap­point­ment Catal­do said: “I am very proud to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead such a vi­brant com­pa­ny that has achieved and done so much to bring pos­i­tive change to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape and com­mu­ni­ties across the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca."

He holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence and a Mas­ter’s in Com­put­er Sci­ence and En­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Asun­ción” in Paraguay and an MBA from Madrid Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty in Spain.

Be­fore this new post, Catal­do worked at Mil­li­com fixed line and mo­bile telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices provider op­er­at­ing in Latin Amer­i­ca

The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed that since 2016, he has al­so been a leader of Ti­go’s ESG strat­e­gy.
“High­lights of this are a strong fo­cus on com­pli­ance and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and the Con­ti­go Conec­ta­dos cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty pro­gramme which works to raise aware­ness of re­spon­si­ble in­ter­net use and prac­tices among chil­dren, ado­les­cents, par­ents, and teach­ers,” it not­ed

Be­fore join­ing Mil­li­com, he worked in sev­er­al tech­nol­o­gy roles in the fi­nance sec­tor in Eu­rope.