BlackBerry India appoints Narendra Nayak as new MD

After being headless for over a quarter, BlackBerry India has a new Managing Director. The man on the hot seat is Narendra Nayak, who comes with 30 plus years of experience in the information technology and telecom industry, spanning business and consumer technologies. Nayak, who has been a participant in the Indian telecom business revolution right from the days of pagers during his stint as Motorola’s Country Sales Manager from 1994 to 1998, has also had stints in senior roles with CSC India and IBM India. [caption id=“attachment_2482532” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image from LinkedIn profile[/caption] At BlackBerry India, Nayak has his work cut out for him – BlackBerry’s smartphones have arguably less than 1 percent of marketshare in India today and the brand has taken a huge beating, largely thanks to lack of marketing and more importantly, suicidal pricing strategies. There’s not much to look forward to on the smartphone front in the immediate future–BlackBerry’s Priv slider that is powered by Android and is an admission of BlackBerry 10’s market failure is making some waves in the West, thanks to the interest in a top-notch device that sports BlackBerry’s legendary keyboard and brings the company’s rock-solid reputation for security and could be the most secure Android smartphone today, but with pricing reported on par with iPhones, the Priv would be dead on arrival in price-sensitive India where more than 50 percent of smartphones fall in the below $100 category. Till BlackBerry CEO John Chen decides whether Priv will be the last BlackBerry smartphone and whether cheaper Android-powered, secure BlackBerry smartphones will be made, BlackBerry’s smartphone business in India will continue to head south, though a few banks and companies still depend on BlackBerry smartphones from a security perspective. Nayak’s main job would be to motivate the BlackBerry India team, which is a shadow of its former self, with massive gaps in sales, distribution, marketing & communications, customer service and more. Even as more and more Indian companies drop support for BlackBerry, Nayak will need to convince them to adopt BlackBerry’s enterprise mobility management solution, BES 12 to manage their new mobility challenges emerging from use of Android, iOS and Windows smartphones. The Indian government will also be a key customer–earlier this month, BlackBerry subsidiary Secusmart, which enables voice encryption announced a partnership with Tata Power Strategic Engineering Division, the aim of which is to evaluate the design, development and marketing of a highly secure mobile communications system tailored to the needs of government customers in India. The Indian government wants to secure voice communications to prevent snooping from the US. It remains to be seen whether the Indian government will allow private organisations to use BlackBerry’s Secusmart solutions though. Then there’s BlackBerry Technology Solutions which was set up in 2014 to house potential high-growth assets like QNX, Certicom, Paratek and BlackBerry’s patents. BTS would also bring to market BlackBerry’s IoT solutions, starting with one for large logistics providers next year. Sandeep Chennakeshu, President of BlackBerry Technology Solutions and an inventor of Indian origin, was in India recently and gave Firstpost an update on BTS’ progress. [embed]http://av.firstpost.com/2015/10/100937_dr.-sandeep-chennakeshu-part-1.mp4[/embed] BlackBerry is also deepening its focus on security through initiatives like CHACE , and has other acquisitions like Watchdox , again in the secure collaboration domain, and Nayak would be expected to ensure that Indian businesses start buying some of these solutions, perhaps in partnership with telecom providers, with whom BlackBerry already has deep relationships.