BlackBerry elevates Sunil Lalvani as India MD

BlackBerry (erstwhile RIM) has elevated director for enterprise sales Sunil Lalvani as managing director for India operations.

Lalvani replaces Sunil Dutt who quit the company in March 2013. With almost 17 years of experience, Lalvani will oversee and drive the company's overall business strategy and growth in India.

Rick Costanzo, executive vice-president for global sales, has been heading the Indian operations over the last two months.

An alumnus of Xaviers Institute of Management in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Lalvani joined RIM in 2009; he spearheaded enterprise sales in the country. Prior to joining RIM, he was director (sales) at EMC. Previously, he had worked with Nokia as head for business mobility.

Founded in 1984, BlackBerry is a telecommunication and wireless equipment company based in Ontario, Canada, with offices in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific and Latin America. In January this year, the company unveiled its next-generation flagship smartphones running on the latest BlackBerry 10 operating system (read here for more on that). At that time, the company also changed its name to BlackBerry from RIM, a name it had used for nearly 30 years.

A few weeks ago, BlackBerry notified BBM Music subscribers via e-mail that the service will be stopped from June 2, 2013. Existing subscribers have been offered a free 30-day trial to its digital music service Rdio which was launched in 2011. However, Rdio is not available in India.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)