S Mobility To Revamp Management

S Mobility Ltd (formerly known as Spice Mobility Ltd), is set to appoint a professional leadership team comprising of a CEO, CFO and other business and vertical heads who will individually manage specific operations within the company. The promoters of the company including industrialist B K Modi, the founder of the company, and other members of the Modi family will cease to play executive roles in the company's operations.

B K Modi, chairman and CEO of Si2imobility said, "We believe mobile Internet is clearly the new wave and the future and this transition is in line with our endeavour to completely professionalize the operations of our mobile Internet businesses. We have already identified and begun appointing relevant professionals and will empower them by providing the team with infrastructure and all other necessary resources."

"Our Global Innovation Centre (GIC) in Singapore will play a strong role in supporting the initiatives of our mobile Internet business and we will also look to leverage our scale to put in place a global supply chain for mobile devices besides setting up our own mobile application store," he added.

The promoters had recently transferred their holdings to another group entity Si2imobility Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Spice Global Investments Private Limited. Si2imobility Pvt Ltd has been formed to provide adequate focus on the group's mobile internet interests and will have its own board of directors in the form of members of Modi's family.

The consolidation of the business will enable all entities to augment product design and development, leveraging the strengths of the recently established GIC, in which the Group plans to invest S$100 million (approx Rs 397 crore) over the next five years. The centre will house about 250 employees who will be responsible for creating mobile Internet products and services which have been customized and made relevant for the customers of the i2i region (Ivory Coast to Indonesia).

A mobile application store called 'S Apps Planet' that provides a distribution mechanism for developers, has also been conceived and developed at the GIC. The app store is now pre-embedded as a standard application in all 'S' branded handsets and most of the installable applications will be customized and developed according to the geographic locations of consumers.