Our Business

It’s the people that make the difference

By James on 15 May 2008

CHENNAI, India – Did you know Nokia’s plant in India now produces 125million devices? Neither did we. Sachin Saxena, the operations director for Nokia India recently paid a visit to the two year old plant, highlighting how integral it’s become to Nokia’s operations in such a short space of time.

India is an utterly amazing place. I was there a couple of years ago and the whole country just seems to be buzzing, at least in the big cities. It’s a place full of dichotomies though where on the one hand you have Mukesh Ambani’s $2billion house being built in downtown Mumbai, just miles from where literally millions of people are living in poverty.

Two years ago Nokia invested $150million in a technology park in Sriperumbudur, just outside Chennai, which now employs 8,000 people with another 2,000 being added over the next 24 months. This is thanks
to a further investment of $75million in the facility where output is already at 125million handsets, 50 per cent of which find their way across south east Asia.

Money is only one part of the story though, and in lots of cases it’s the lesser part. This is all about people. Those 8,000 who already work there are the ones who genuinely make it happen and that’s the great
thing about India. It’s populated with brilliant people who are keen to make a difference and make their mark on the world. I have a huge amount of respect for them and what they stand for, not to mention how hard they work. They do genuinely put some other countries to shame.