India-Born Rajeev Suri Is Nokia’s New CEO!
By Syed Khaled Shahbaaz,
Finnish smartphone maker and technology giant Nokia announced India-born Rajeev Suri as its new CEO after Stephen Elopboomeranged to Microsoft following the Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia in a whopping 5.6 billion euro deal. Suri’s ascent as CEOwill relieve Nokia Chairman RistoSiilasmaa who has additionally been serving as the interim CEO following Elop’s departure.
Steering the Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) division to account for 90% of sales from Nokia’s businesses, Rajeev Suri was widely speculated to be the next head honcho at Microsoft. Elucidating on the decision to elect Suri as the new CEO, Chairman Siilasmaa said that Suri is known for his “proven ability to create strategic clarity, drive innovation and growth, ensure disciplined execution, and deliver results.”
There were wide spread speculations that Suri with his industrial erudite, experiences in varied capacities and profuse understanding of strategic planning that’s core to all critical operations at Nokia will be the next logical choice for Nokia’s CEO and Nokia’s official announcement only endorsed these speculations. “We believe that his passion for technology will help ensure that Nokia continues to deliver innovations that have a positive impact on people’s lives”, he added.
Suri joined Nokia group in 1995 as head of NSN’s cellular equipment. He is credited for making one of the biggest turn-arounds in the tech industry’s shooting the NSN’s revenue from less than a third to about half. Suri is also acclaimed for setting up Nokia’s business hub in India.
Rajeev Suri, aged 45, was born in India to Yashpal and Asha Suri but brought up in Kuwait. He’s a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Telecommunications and an alumni of Manipal Institute of Technology, the same institute Microsoft’s CEO SatyaNadella graduated from. His wife Nina is an entrepreneur and his two sons Ankit (20) and Anish (17) study abroad.
Meanwhile, Nokia announced that its financial results out beat the forecast by a considerable margin. The analysts had predicted 5.7 per cent core operating profit margin while Nokia recorded 9.3 per cent in profit fuelling speculations among analysts that it may consider buying Alcatel-Lucent to expand presence in the United States.
While Rajeev Suri is confident of brighter prospects for Nokia in wake of good financial results, the company reportedly spending about 400 million euros in dividends for last year. According to a Reuters report, Nokia is planning to pay an extra $1.4 billion in dividends for last year and 1.25 billion euros in share buy-back program.
[The writer is a software engineer turned journalist and can be reached at [email protected]]