Bangalore: Ending strenuous denials following a series of Mint enquiries, Microsoft India announced in a press statement at 6.41p.m. on Friday that managing director Neelam Dhawan was leaving the company to become managing director at HP India.
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Dhawan’s exit comes after simmering internal uncertainty over top executives at Microsoft India spilled over into the public domain with dozens of its employees reacting to a detailed blog posting in a forum widely used by Microsoft Corp.’s employees to air their views on the company and how it is run in India.
This forum is also regularly monitored by Microsoft as a surrogate information source on employee-related issues.
The abrupt announcement of Dhawan’s exit, and the serious and specific nature of allegations in the posting on minimsft.blogspot.com and the strong supporting reactions, allegations which Microsoft India officials strenuously denied as they did those regarding Dhawan’s departure, come as a distraction for the software giant, which is pursuing Yahoo Inc., and sees India as vital for its growth.
Hewlett-Packard Co. is a dominant player in India’s hardware market and, with the pending acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Corp., in the software solutions business as well.
The firm is both a big customer and rival to Microsoft.
Mint couldn’t independently ascertain the veracity of some of the claims though at least one senior Microsoft India executive confirmed some of the more central issues roiling Microsoft operations here, including questions about the leadership of chairman Ravi Venkatesan who oversaw Dhawan; the consequence of an internal investigation of some India-based transactions entered in the past 12 months, and rising attrition.
This executive, who had knowledge of Dhawan’s departure to HP even as Microsoft officially kept denying it, did not want to be named.
The alleged problem transactions involve the company’s original equipment manufacturing, or OEM, team. This senior executive said Microsoft’s OEM team got a Delhi-based OEM (a company that makes computers) to place a huge order and recognised this revenue to meet internal targets. This order was later reversed, but by then the revenue target was considered met (and the blame for cancelling the order likely passed on to the OEM).
Without specifically referring to this OEM transaction, the post said that “the really breaking news...is that the MD has been fired for the same transaction that various Microsoft people in Delhi have already been fired.”
The Microsoft OEM team has been gutted, this person added, after the nature of this transaction came to light. This team reported to Dhawan.