Betfair welcomes ex-Yahoo exec as new Vice President

Betfair, the world's biggest betting community, has announced the appointment of Raj Vemulapalli as Vice President of mobile engineering. One of the founding members of Yahoo's Real Time Communications Division, Vemulapalli's key responsibilities in his new role will be designing and developing new products and services for the betting company's mobile exchange.

Betfair has been at the forefront of the mobile betting movement, and was the first company to have a betting application listed in the Apple App Store for both the iPhone and iPad. It has also recently opened up a revenue sharing scheme for third party developers who build Betfair's API services into their products.

Vemulapalli brings with him 11 years of Internet business development, and it is this experience that Betfair will ulitise as the company continues to expand its mobile gaming initiatives in Europe and Asia, with particular focus on Singapore, Thailand and South Korea. It is expected that he will be based in both San Francisco and London.
Tony McAlister, CTO of Betfair, said: "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 APIs, a development route which is significant to our mobile strategy going forward."
Vemulapalli is the replacement for Charlie Palmer, who recently left his post, and is just one of a few key appointments being made by the company after the departure of senior executives including Tim Phillips and Robin Osmond.