Shivakumar takes over as Nokia VP

Nokia India today announced the appointment of D Shivakumar as vice-president and country general manager for customer and market operations, to be effective from May 1, 2006.

Present executive director and vice-president of Philips India, Shivakumar will replace Sanjeev Sharma, who is headed for Singapore as vice-president for marketing, Asia Pacific, Nokia.

The rejig happens amid intense industry speculation that Sharma, who has been with Nokia India for over 10 years, was on his way out of India.

However, a company statement quoted Urpo Karjalaimen, senior vice-president, Nokia, Asia Pacific, as saying: "I am also very excited about Sanjeev Sharma's move to vice-president, MP/CMO, Asia Pacific, to be based in Singapore."

The announcement comes just before the scheduled inauguration of Nokia's mobile and GSM manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on March 11 by the Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen.

Industry sources said the Finnish handset major is also planning an organisational restructuring, by creating new positions of distribution head and direct business head, under the country head.

In fact, there were rumours that Sunil Dutt, Nokia India's sales head, might exit the company. The company, however, brushed it off saying "this is pure speculation. Nokia as a policy does not comment on market rumours and speculation".

Nokia India recently announced its new distribution strategy, under which it plans to distribute handsets on its own in one half of the country's geographical area, with the other half remaining with HCL Infosystems, its sole distributor in India.

Last year, Sanjay Behl, sales head, Nokia India, quit the company to join Reliance Infocomm as the head of branding, and Nokia has not yet found a replacement for him. However, company officials said a new marketing head is going to join soon.