People who made news last fornight

On Cloud Nine
The new CEO of cloud software provider VMware is driving his company in new directions. VMware will shortly compete with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service market. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO, who was in India recently, also announced an investment of $120 million in this country. For starters, the company is leasing a 420,000 sq. ft. building in Bangalore which can accommodate 2,700 employees. VMware's existing research and development team of 800 in India is only second in size to that at the company headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Gelsinger, who earned his spurs working for chipmaker Intel for three decades, was all praise for his India team. "India is participating in every one of our priorities. We have projects here like networking, management and storage. The largest piece of the core software development that happened for Hybrid Cloud (a new solution) occurred here in India," he says.
Goutam Das

Work the Talk
She has always shunned the limelight. Chitra Ramkrishna, 49, who took over recently as the new Managing Director and CEO of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), India's largest stock exchange, prefers instead to let her work do the talking. Part of the core team that has been with the NSE since its inception in the early 1990s, she was formerly joint managing director. It is said that even before she took charge, she attended a series of in-house meetings in Delhi and Mumbai, and held more meetings with the country's leading brokerage houses to prepare for her new role. Sources say she wants the employees to push themselves to the maximum and in turn will champion their causes forcefully, such as their demand to increase staff and improve systems and technology.
Mahesh Nayak

Thumping Exit
D. Shivakumar, the soft-spoken outgoing Operations Head, Emerging Markets (including India) at Nokia, makes his point by thumping the table. But that is about the only loud aspect of this otherwise soft-spoken man, who quit after an eight year long stint with the Finnish handset giant. He was in charge when Nokia had its best run in India, capturing almost two-thirds of the market. Since then, no doubt, Nokia has slipped, failing to respond adequately to the demand for smartphones and dual SIM card phones. Very comfortable with numbers, Shivakumar makes a point of his memory when he says of his Mont Blanc pen of many years. "I don't forget it anywhere," he told Business Today a year ago. Shivakumar's replacement will have to be as good as, if not better than him, if Nokia is to chart the revival it seeks.
Sunny Sen

Enterprising Teacher
For as long as he can remember, Anant Agarwal has been fascinated by enterprise. As a 13-year-old growing up in Mangalore, he started a chicken farm and later tried his hand at grafting roses. Today, he is President of edX, a joint Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University venture in online learning. "Our vision is to increase access to quality education around the world so students can take our courses," he says. India, of course, is high on Agarwal's agenda, given that edX attracts the second highest number of takers from this country.
Shamni Pande

Air, There and Everywhere
Ever since he took over as CEO and Director General of the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) in July 2011, Tony Tyler has been travelling extensively to meet member airline representatives across the globe. Recently in India, Tyler, an industry veteran with over three decades of experience, says that if the country's aviation market has to grow, the government must reduce high fuel taxes and airport charges. "State sales tax on aviation fuel is as high as 30 per cent. That's not sustainable," he adds. "In 2012, the global average growth for domestic markets was four per cent whereas the Indian domestic market declined by two per cent." He notes that many foreign airlines see huge opportunity in India, but find the current environment too costly to operate in. A British national, Tyler, who was born in Egypt, likes skiing in the Alps around Geneva.
Manu Kaushik