APART from having taken over at the helm of two iconic bluechip tech firms, both of which are now past their prime, newly-named Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella have more in common — both were just a year apart at the Manipal Institute of Technology near Mangalore in Karnataka.
Both Suri and Nadella taught by the same faculty and both were students of electronics and communications — Nadella graduated in 1988 while Suri was in the 1989 batch.
Suri, 46, will start in his new role on May 1, Nokia said on Tuesday. Having been picked as the head of its networks division to spearhead the company’s future and revive growth after selling its mobile phone business to Microsoft Corp., 149-year-old Nokia is intensifying its focus on wireless-network equipment as it faces a fresh start.
Suri, who has run the network unit for four years, needs to challenge bigger competitors such as Sweden’s Ericsson AB and China’s Huawei Technologies Co., to turnaround dwindling equipment revenue, which accounts for about 90 per cent of Nokia’s sales now.
MIT was rather modest in its celebration, with a statement claiming that Suri’s elevation as Nokia chief, coming in the wake Nadella’s appointment as Microsoft CEO, indicated “that Manipal Institute of Technology is as good an engineering institute as any in the world”.
Source: BBCNews