Apple India having tough time retaining talent

Looks like Apple India is having tough times retaining its talent as 8 senior managers at the local operations of Apple have resigned in the past two months, according to an Economic Times report.

Reportedly, some of these employees weren’t happy with country head Sanjay Kaul’s ways of unduly emphasising recruiting talent from consulting background and huge pressure on sales target.

Citing senior industry executives, the report says that among the exit list, two notable names include V Anandkumar and Vickram Bedi who were in the select group of Apple’s country leadership for the Indian market.

While Anandkumar was leading the sales planning and support, Bedi was head of sales with focus on consumers, small and medium businesses, corporate resellers and distribution.

The others who have put in their papers include Pavan Kareti who used to manage all the franchise partners for Apple Premium Reseller and Samidha Gupta, managing accessories and the Apple TV business.

Then there is Vineet Kumar, account manager for monobrand retail that includes the franchise-led Apple exclusive stores, and Raja Basu, head of sales for South and North. Rajesh Marwaha, the head of mentor training, and Aparna Sareen who led new store development and marketing programmes for the Apple exclusive brand stores have also called it quits.

“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,” one of the executives told ET.

Sanjay Kaul has been very aggressive in pushing his team to deliver volume sales to make India the top growing markets for Apple. The company is also looking forward to setting up an assembling operation in Bangalore in partnership with Wistron.