BlackBerry India MD Sunil Dutt quits

Sunil Dutt, managing director of BlackBerry India (previously Research In Motion or RIM), has quit the company. Although Dutt could not be immediately contacted for comments, the company confirmed the development in a statement that said, "We can confirm Dutt has left his position as MD, BlackBerry India, with immediate effect. We wish him well for the future."

The company has started looking for Dutt's replacement but in the meantime, Rick Costanzo, executive vice-president for global sales, will take over the leadership of the management team in the country. "India is an extremely important market for BlackBerry and our aim is to continue to build on our recent momentum with the launch of BlackBerry 10," the statement further added.

Dutt joined the company back in December 2011, when Frenny Bawa, BlackBerry's chief executive for almost seven years, left the company to pursue 'other interests'. Prior to joining BlackBerry, Dutt was working as president, personal systems group, in Hewlett Packard India Sales Pvt Ltd and was responsible for expanding its business in enterprise, mid-market and the consumer space. Earlier, he was heading the mobile handsets operations for Samsung in India. In the past, he had also worked with Nokia, Barista Coffee Company, Whirlpool, Wipro and Philips.

Founded in 1984, BlackBerry is a telecommunication and wireless equipment company based in Ontario, Canada, with offices in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific and Latin America. In January this year, the company unveiled its next-generation flagship smartphones running on the latest BlackBerry 10 operating system (read here for more on that). At that time, the company also rebranded itself from RIM (a name it had used for nearly 30 years) to simply BlackBerry.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)