The drumbeat is growing as Nokia woos India as the enormous market is just opening up for it. Nokia now needs India more than India needs Nokia. In that corporate game, Nokia has appointed a well-known financial expert, Lalita Gupte, to the Board of Nokia.
The Nokia Governance Committee will propose that Ms. Lalita D. Gupte, Prof. Dr. Henning Kagermann, and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo be elected as new members of the Nokia Board for the term from the Annual General Meeting in 2007 until the close of the Annual General Meeting in 2008.
Lalita was the former Joint Managing Director of ICICI Bank Limited, the second-largest bank in India, and is currently non-executive Chairman of the ICICI Venture Funds Management Co Ltd. She is also member of the Board of Directors of Bharat Forge Ltd, Firstsource Solutions Ltd and Kirloskar Brothers Ltd.
Lalita joined ICICI in 1971. She represents half a generation away from me. It is likely that during my time in India, when I was on the Expert Committees vetting projects for ICICI that our paths may have crossed, but I cannot swear to that! I seem to remember that she took part in one investigation where I appeared as the Technical Expert for the project!
However, one story that I have told many times stands out at this juncture. 
In 1987, Paul Collander, who was a Senior Researcher in Nokia Research in Espoo and my then colleague, Professor Seppo Leppävuori, went on a working visit to Singapore. At my insistence, they decided to stop over in India. They met up with my uncle, the late K. M. Mammen Mappillai, who was then Chairman and Managing Director of MRF Ltd.
Backed by the then Indian Ambassador to Finland, His Excellency K. P. Fabian, I organised a visit for them to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, one of the best post-graduate research universities in India.
Both Seppo and Paul were very excited by what they saw. On their return, Paul published an internal report to the Board of Nokia about the immense possibility of using India as a base for advanced research for the expansion of Nokia.
Paul sent me the reply he got from the then Managing Director of Nokia, Kari Kairamo:
"Paris is too far for Nokia."
That visit did, however, set the stage for along and valuable cooperation between the IISc and our University of Oulu, Microelectronics Laboratory, with exchange of professors and researchers. On a couple of occasions I lectured to the Microelectronics and Electronics wing of IISc. We hosted Prof. B. S. Sonde, who was then the Head of the Electronics Department. Prof. Sonde later went on to be the Vice Chancellor of the University of Goa.
The appointment of Lalita to the Board is the culmination of a long battle to make this (Finnish?) multinational recognise the importance of India in the equation of world powers in the field of telecommunication.
Let us hope that this gentle lady will contribute to making the thinking of Nokia more humane than it has behaved in the last two quarters on 2006, where the company has caused great uncertainty amongst the many wonderful Finnish engineers working in their Finnish operations!
If you cut off the hand that feeds you for short term corporate gains, we in India know what will be the outcome. I am sure that, given her true skills, Lalita will play a role in correcting a now floundering multinational in the act of good governance.
And, dear Lalita - on your next visit to Oulu, do drop in and see us. We have now three current India related CEO's in Oulu (an Indian CEO for a Finnish company, a Finnish CEO for an Indian Company and an Indian CEO for an Indian Company).
However, you could meet the first member of this group, now happily retired, ME (CEO of nothing, nowhere!).
No comments:
Post a Comment