RIM India MD Frenny Bawa Resigns

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion's India Head, Frenny Bawa has resigned from the company. Although various media reports quoting company statement said she has moved on to pursue 'other interests', her exit comes at a time when the company is facing tough times with severe competition in the smartphone business, an embarrassing operations blackout recently besides calls from the Indian government over security concerns.

Urpo Karjalainen, senior vice president for Greater China, India, Australia and New Zealand will oversee the India's business operations temporarily the company has said.

Bawa was the managing director of RIM's India operations since 2004. Prior to joining RIM, she was working at several senior level positions at TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company, Canada.

BlackBerry has nearly one million subscribers in India. Last month, due to a core switch failure, many BlackBerry users faced problems in accessing e-mail, messenger and other online services on their smartphones for three days.

The firm has been facing financial strain internationally. It reported nearly 59 per cent decline in net income to $329 million for the three months ended August 27, 2011 as sales of its BlackBerry devices dropped both sequentially and over the year ago period. The firm has also lost a string of senior executives internationally over the past few months.

Recently RIM has set up a facility in Mumbai to aid the Indian government in carrying out lawful surveillance of its BlackBerry services and last month it was offering free applications to appease BlackBerry customers.