Post the reveal of three senior level executive exits from Apple headquarters in the last couple of days, we’re now shedding light on the acute condition of departures at the Indian arm as well. A fresh report, citing senior industry officials, suggests that eight executives have resigned in search of better opportunities in the last two months.
Starting off, the Cupertino giant has parted ways with two prominent executives from the country’s leadership. This include the head of sales planning and support V Anandkumar and head of sales Vickram Bedi. The former has already taken an early retirement whereas the latter is serving a notice period — still focusing on consumers, small and medium businesses, corporate resellers and distribution.
Apple has also witnessed multiple top-tier exits across different business categories and verticals of the company. Pavan Kareti and Samidha Gupta also departed from their positions of national business managers. The former was working with Cupertino for a good seven years. He used to spearhead all the franchisee partners for Apple Premium Resellers. This is a global initiative wherein select exclusive Apple stores are designed and operated as per their official global standards. The latter was responsible for the accessories and Apple TV business.
Additonally, several other managerial level employees have either quit or applied for the same in the previous month. These include Vineet Kumar, account manager for franchise-led exclusive Apple reseller retail stores and Raja Basu, sales head for South and North India. This list is further augmented with the additon of store-level staff training mentor Rajesh Marwaha and Aparna Sareen, the store development & marketing program lead for aformentioned reseller stores.
Talking about the departures, a senior industry official says,
Apple is one of the good pay masters in the Indian consumer electronics sector. While some more senior executives are on the lookout, the problem they are facing is matching salary levels, more so now when the market itself is down.
Further, industry officials suggest employee dissatisfaction with Apple’s country head Sanjay Kaul — who was bumped up to this position in May 2016 – as the potential reason for these exits. The employees are of the opinion that Kaul is more focused towards bringing consultation talent on board. This has increased pressure on their humongous and slacking sales targets, causing the executives to make a switch.
Global Departures
In the last couple of days, Apple has announced that it has parted ways some key executives who helped shape the company. The first stroke came in the form of programming language Swift’s creator Chris Lattner. He is calling it quits at the technology behemoth and moving on to lead the Autopilot software team at Elon Musk-led Tesla Motors. This replaces the company’s interim software lead Jinnah Hosein, who had been broght in from SpaceX’s software team.
The second director-level departure from the Cupertino giant came in the form of Daniel Gross, who is leaving Apple to join Y Combinator as a partner. He is quitting his job at the tech behemoth to take another plunge in the enterprenial waters of Silicon Valley. This can be seen as reconnection with his roots, as he founded Y Combinator backed search engine platform Cue.
And finally, it was also revelead that Apple’s product designer Matt Casebolt also vacated his position to join Tesla back in December. This is the second top-tier executive to jump the ship from the tech behemoth to the automobile giant. He, who was responsible for the Macbook’s design aesthetics, has joined the latter as its senior engineering director for “closures & mechanisms.”
