Rajeev Suri


Rajeev Suri is an Indian-born business executive and was the CEO of Nokia until 31-July-2020. Before being appointed CEO in May 2014, he was the CEO of Nokia Solutions and Networks from 2009 and held various positions in Nokia since 1995. Suri became the CEO of Nokia when the sale of Nokia's phone division to Microsoft Mobile was completed, replacing Stephen Elop. He is an alumnus of Manipal Academy of Higher Education], Karnataka state of India].

Early life

Rajeev Suri was born on 10 October 1967 in New Delhi, India. He grew up in Kuwait. He is a Singaporean citizen and is based in Espoo, Finland. Rajeev Suri has a Bachelor's of Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, which was affiliated to Mangalore University at that time.

Career

In his more than 20 years of international experience, Rajeev has worked in roles comprising strategy and M&A, product marketing, sales, major account leadership, regional and business unit leadership and has lived in Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. He worked for multinational corporations in India and Nigeria before joining Nokia in 1995.
Suri followed Simon Beresford-Wylie as the CEO of NSN in October 2009 after Nokia Networks and Siemens Networks had been merged. He is considered a 'turnaround specialist' in the global tech circles.
On 23 November 2011, Suri announced that the company planned to eliminate 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013 to enable NSN to refocus on mobile broadband equipment, the fastest-growing segment of the market. The reductions would slash the company's work force by 23 percent from 74,000. The cuts followed NSN's $1.2 billion purchase of Motorola's mobile network equipment business in July 2010, which added staff; and would help the company trim annual operating expenses by $1.35 billion by the end of 2013.
On 29 April 2014, Suri was appointed as the CEO of Nokia. This was after Nokia had bought back full control of NSN and sold Nokia's phone division to Microsoft Mobile. Suri is the second non-Finnish CEO of Nokia after Stephen Elop.
Suri is one of those rare top corporate executives who have achieved heights without pursuing any MBA/PG degree.
On 2 March 2020, Nokia announced that Suri will step down as CEO of Nokia. He will be replaced by Pekka Lundmark, starting 1 August 2020.
On 24 June 2020, it was reported that Pekka Lundmark will take over the reins a month earlier than the scheduled date, which is on 1 August 2020.

Personal life

Rajeev is based between Helsinki/ London. Suri is married to Nina Alag Suri, an entrepreneur, founder and CEO at Singaporean startup X0pa.ai and has two sons Ankit and Anish.