Looks like the era of leading global companies being
headed by Indians has been heralded: Indira Nooyi (PepsiCo), Satya
Nadella (Microsoft), George Kurian (NetApp), Rajat Gupta (Ex-MD,
McKinsey & Company), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayan
(Adobe), Vikram Pandit (Ex-CEO, Citigroup), Francisco D’Souza
(Cognizant), Dinesh Paliwal (Harman International), and Surya Mohapatra
(Quest Diagnostics), etc., bear testimony to the fact that Indians, as
indeed India, are rising globally, and how! If you are wondering why the
man who was COO of Qualcomm, lead Motorola Mobility, and is now the CEO
of semiconductor major, Global Foundries, the man who was the
beneficiary of the so-called ‘Golden Parachute’ – Sanjay Jha has not
been mentioned, it’s because while the others were mentioned as part of
the list, we are going to take a closer look at the life and works of
this amazing talent.
The origins
Not many
outside the country know the fact that the unseemingly state of eastern
India, Bihar, has produced a lot more intellectuals, bureaucrats, and
leaders for the country than perhaps any other state has. It is from
this very state; Jha was born in 1963 in the city of Bhagalpur – which
has some notoriety attached to it.
During his academic years, Jha seemed to have travelled far and wide – from Asia to Europe, before finally moving to the land of dreams – America.
Education
After
completing his schooling from Bhagalpur, Jha left for the United
Kingdom to do his Bachelor’s in Engineering from the University of
Liverpool (England). He then went to Glasgow, Scotland to pursue his
Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Strathclyde.
Besides, that Sanjay was also awarded a D.Sc. (h.c.) from the
University, and holds an MBA degree from The University of Chicago.
(U.S.).
Initial Jobs
His initial job was as
lead design engineering with GEC Hirst Research Centre in London. Then
he left for the far west to San Diego (U.S.) to work in a similar role
with Brooktree Corporation.
The big league
Jha moved to the big league when he joined telecom major, Qualcomm, in 1994 as a senior engineer with the Qaulcomm
very large-scale integration (VLSI) group that was working on the
‘Global Star’ satellite phone. Then he took a similar assignment for MSM
2200 chipset of Qualcomm for which it had developed the first 13k
vocoder application-specific integrated circuit.
Then, in about
1997, Jha was elevated to the position of vice president of engineering –
where he was entrusted with overseeing the integrated circuit
engineering group - the same team and projects he had been working since
he joined. He used his opportunity to both prove his mettle as well as
have a shot at leadership roles, subsequently – which he was ordained to
be.
Thus, in the fourteen years he was at Qualcomm, he would go
on to pioneer a spate of initiatives that would stand out as marquee
offerings of the company. Beginning with the VLSI, he led and oversaw
the development of five generations of modem and cell site chipsets,
digital baseband and RF (radio frequency), and system software. The
following year i.e. in 1998, he was promoted to Senior Vice President of
Engineering and, four years later, in 2002, as Senior Vice President
and General Manager, Jha led the formation of Qualcomm Technologies
& Ventures, and managed both the technology investment portfolio and the new technology group.
These
initiatives saw him getting delegated with greater responsibilities as
he was elevated to Executive Vice President of Qualcomm CDMA
Technologies in 2003, and then becoming its Chief Operations Officer
(COO) in 2006 and overseeing corporate research and development and as
well as Qualcomm Flarion Technologies (QFT).
The next step was his
move to Motorola as its co-CEO which came in 2008. This was the period
when the mobile maker was struggling to hold its position amidst
increased competition and the advent of newer technologies heralded by
others – 2G, 3G, color, camera, QWERTY keyboard, and touch. Its share of
the U.S. mobile phone market had plummeted to 7% from a superb 64%. So,
Jha had his task cut-out–
he knew perhaps that he had very little time to deliver some clinching
products before the company runs compete out of market steam.
It
here that Jha experience what it is like to revive and company on the
decline, where employee morale wasn’t really encouraging,
His shrewd handing
of a lot of internal affairs – his painstaking efforts in building
trust and support of demoralized lot, and topping it up with severing
ties with Microsoft that had failed deliver a key mobile Windows release
and switching to Android – worked as a master-stroke. This move as
believed to be one of ‘the’ revival stories as the phone ‘The Motorola
Droid’ sold faster than Steve jobs’ masterpiece – the original iPhone,
thus saving Motorola from extinction, and its biggest customer Verizon -
which would have taken a beating in the face of AT&Ts exclusive
iPhone deal.
This revival created great goodwill for both Motorola
Mobility and Jha, prompting Google to acquire the company’s mobile
phone business in 2011 for a reported $12.5 billion – roughly the market
value of all of Motorola in 2008 when Jha took over.
So, when
Google completed the acquisition Motorola’s mobile phone business, it
was felt that Jha’s services would no more be required. He was offered
the ‘Golden Parachute’ package as part of which got a severance package,
stocks options and the like – summing to a total of about $66 million.
At Global Foundries
The board of Global
Foundries chose Jha as it CEO in early 2014. The decision was a
no-brainer – so to say, as Jha’s extensive and varied technology
experiences and his successful track record tracing back to his decade
and a half at Qualcomm, and his master-stroke at his last company
(Motorola) - both, in engineering and leadership roles, stood out and
made it easy for the board to make the decision.
It been only a year since he is at the helm for Global Foundries
but he has a series of initiatives planned for the semiconductor major,
facing competition from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
As per Jha, establishing a reputation for execution, grabbing market
share and improving financial performance would lead Global Foundries to
where it can consider strategic options. Given Jha’s successful track
record, one can bet he will deliver this time round as well. Good luck
Sanjay Jha.