Lenovo-Moto head Sudhin Mahur quits, Shashank Sharma to lead Indian operations

During the second half, players such as Xiaomi was particularly disruptive with an aggressively-priced, broad portfolio taken to market with an effective channel expansion strategy.

| Updated: Friday, April 13, 2018, 13:05 [IST]

After serving as the head of Lenovo-Motorola group's mobile business in India Sudhin Mathur has stepped down from his position. He will be succeeded by Asia Pacific head Shashank Sharma, ET reported.

According to the report his movement out of the company was on personal grounds and it had nothing to do with the firm's performance in the market.

However, industry sources told Gizbot that, "The decision has been taken by the management a week ago due to slow sales in India, especially in the recent quarters."

Mathur replaced Amit Boni back in 2017 who was serving as General Manager for Motorola India.

"Though many might link his leaving with the shaky performance of the brand, I think he has held the brand stable despite rapid disruptions which have been disrupting for all brands including Lenovo," CyberMedia Research (CMR) analyst Faisal Kawoosa told us.

As per Counterpoint report, the competitive landscape has changed significantly in the last year, with the rise of brands such as Xiaomi,OPPO, VIVO in the smartphone segment and players such as Reliance Jio, Nokia HMD and iTel in the feature phone segment - all able to disrupt the market with high-quality and attractively-priced offerings.

This helped Xiaomi to surpass the long-time market leader, Samsung, for the first time ever performance ended Samsung's six-year market dominance, a report said.

Xiaomi (259 percent), iTel (213 percent), Huawei (165 percent), Vivo (115 percent) and OPPO (104 percent) were the fastest growing smartphone brands during CY 2017, the research firm added.

Meanwhile, with an aim to strengthen its retail presence in the country Moto is planning to open 1000 stores across 100 cities by end of 2018.

The company has recently announced the opening 100 "Moto Hubs" in Karnataka across the top 8 cities out of which 50 will be in Bengaluru. In addition to this, Moto has announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in Mumbai and 25 Moto Hub stores in Kolkata. Furthermore, Motorola commenced the year 2018, with the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs
in New Delhi.

The company has also collaborated with Poorvika Mobilesacross 43 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, and Karnataka and with BigC and Lot Mobile stores across 55 cities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to provide retail access to consumers.

Exclusive: Interaction with Sudhin Mathur Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India

All Moto Hub stores house the entire portfolio of Motorola devices,including moto e4, moto e4 plus, moto c, moto c plus, moto g families including moto g5s plus, moto g5s, moto g5 plus and moto g5 as well as moto z franchise and moto mods along with accessories like on-ear and in-ear headphones, moto shells and covers.