On November 23, 2010, Arvind Rao, the 53-year-old co-founder and CEO of OnMobile, bought approximately 6 lakh shares of his company from the open market, representing a little over 1 percent of the company’s total shares. Rao already owned over 10 percent of the company’s shares.
This led to the souring of OnMobile and Rao’s relations with Infosys, causing the latter to even complain to SEBI in 2007 against OnMobile’s planned IPO.
(This story appears in the 03 August, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Dear sir, But, Yes .. Onmobile Cash Balance is quite strong .. It still seems it can pick up if a proper Corporate Governance is adopted. Who will bell the cat?! - so that the investor like me can breath properly.
on Dec 4, 2012Also the articles dosenot speek anything about Verse which is a VAS company that was incubated at OnMobile, it was only in 2011 OnMobile had sold the last 10% that it was holding in Verse.
on Nov 5, 2012The above Article seems to be true as i find these senior employees quit the company during the same time : 1) VP-Business Development Sanjay Bambri Quits in Nov-Dec 2011 2) Rajesh morti Quits in Dec-2011 3) Maouli Raman goes on holiday ( more then 2 months) in Nov 2011 4) New CFO Amit Rastogi too quits in 3 months after he joined Onmobile Very important : Sandeep ganguly, Who was an ex employee of Onmobile, who joined Mobile Traffik joins back as soon as VP-Sales Resigns and takes over a new portfolio ( The CEO of Onmobile had planned well, but could not execute his Plan !!) But, Yes .. Onmobile Cash Balance is quite strong .. It still seems it can pick up if a proper Corporate Governance is adopted.
on Aug 2, 2012And now on 30th Oct OnMobile has laid off 45 employees citing cost cutting and restructuring. People like application developers and operations engineers who draw an annual pay of 1.5L - 2L where laid off whereas the company still employees close to 40 directors who draw a minimum pay for 25L per director. There are offices at international location who have been contributing just 8k USD per month for last 8 months whereas the cost to maintain that office comes to 45k USD. Hope the team that is doing the restructuring will grow above the personal relations and will work for the betterment of the company.
on Nov 2, 2012Well, it is not too late. Being an employee of OM, i really feel sorry for people. Decisions were made for growth of the company. Every employee who were closed to Mr.Rao were given the best positions to mis-use them in making money. For Eg: A Procurement Head (Ajay KV Kumar) was made a President, i think which was not necessary. It is also proved that before making him a top-positioner, he was used for short-routes for raising fake PO's. But it is still hurting us why he is still been continued in his position which he doesn't deserve to be.
on Aug 2, 2012The company\'s cash balances are strong and intact. If this was true, then auditors would have pointed it out, which is not the case. It looks like there is nothing wrong. So it does not appear that there has been any financial irregularity, which the company has clarified through the media.
on Aug 1, 2012The undying, everlasting and only truth when it comes to Tech Companies is: \"Innovate, Reinvent or Die\". OnMobile and possibly Mr.Rao, clouded by visions of their own success, thought RBTs and Voice would continue going on selling for ever. Hardly any new product idea came forth as product teams were cut to size and sales teams were increased exponentially. They somehow missed the advancing surge and incredibly huge opportunity in data products, which if they had heeded to, would have changed the company and its revenues and would have given them a huge boost. But, well. This happens when you concentrate on selling and revenues instead of creating and developing new products. \"Self-reinvent\" cycles are much shorter these days. If you miss a boom, you are done. Look at the Apples, Googles and IBMs of the World. What if Google had decided to stick on with only search? IBM as a computer-manufacturing company and not as a software solutions giant? OnMobile missed the bus, train, boat and spaceship. Data products are reaching their peak. It might not be too late to start innovating again. Will they be able to do it? I really feel sad about this because OM was the poster boy of Indian tech-startups, a real potential candidate for a high-tech innovative product company, probably the first, to come out of India. I really hope that they can pull themselves together and rise to their former glory because it is a great company and has some great people. All the best OnMobile!
on Aug 1, 2012VAS margins coming under stress in the present times due to increased burden of spectrum allocation charges on telecons in india. Onmobile was a sucess story in past but Arvinda Rao dream company now in troubled waters. Promoters sometimes themselves shatter their dreams.
on Jul 31, 2012