RS Desikan steps down as CEO of S Mobility

RS Desikan has ceased to be the chief executive officer (CEO) and manager of S Mobility (formerly Spice Mobility Ltd), the company informed in a BSE filing.

Desikan has over 35 years of experience and had joined S Mobility as its CEO in Feb 2012, prior to which he was the Group CFO and finance director at IT solutions firm Mastek. Before that, he was the CFO at Quinnox Inc., a technology and business solutions firm. An IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he had earlier also worked at Xerox India.

S Mobility had posted almost 19 per cent rise in net sales to Rs 468.41 crore for its third quarter ended March 31, 2014 over the year-ago period, led by sales growth in its handsets unit. The handsets business saw sales rising 25.7 per cent too Rs 421.59 crore in the quarter. The services business, in contrast, recorded decline in revenues from Rs 58.92 crore to Rs 48.72 crore in the same period.

Overall, the firm posted net loss of Rs 18.67 crore as against net profit of Rs 2.24 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2013.

The poor performance in the bottom-line was due to threefold rise in segment loss in the mobile devices business. In particular this was due to higher cost of branding, which more than doubled last quarter as also higher cost of products sourced to be sold. The services unit also reported lower profit in the last quarter. The branding expense for the quarter more than doubled to Rs 21.71 crore from Rs 9.21 crore in the same quarter last year.

Earlier this year, Bhupendra Kumar Modi had stepped down as S Mobility's chairman and director. At the time, the company had appointed board member Dilip Kumar Modi as the new chairman.