Sarin for Yahoo?
Sukumar Ranganathan -
Tuesday, December 09, 2008 12:36 PM
Under News
The Wall Street Journal reports that Arun Sarin, who retired recently as CEO of Vodafone is being considered for the top job at Yahoo Inc.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122878898730490481.html?mod=testMod
The report says:
Mr. Sarin, 54 years old, has largely stayed out of speculation over whom Yahoo might tap for the job, which has included a wide range of executives from other Internet giants and technology companies. But the Yahoo board had been seeking a seasoned technology executive with experience running a public company from the start, and Mr. Sarin, who meets those credentials, continues to remain in contention, according to people familiar with the matter.
That's right, Sarin ran a dotcom for some time, and not just any other dotcom but one that its founder expected to tocuh $1 trillion in market value. It was called Infospace and it was founded by an Indian, Naveen Jain
As this profile in Inc magazine says:
InfoSpace, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., would become such a colossus by selling content and services for high-traffic Web sites and Internet-enabled devices. Its applications would allow its customers to deliver consumer and commercial services, such as online phone directories, maps, games, and stock quotes. By April 2000, when Jain reeled in Sarin, InfoSpace was on its way. It had forged relationships with more than 1,500 Internet portal sites and 60 content providers. It had deals with more than 20 wireless carriers. Noting that soon there would be more than a billion cell phones and non-PC devices worldwide, Jain justified InfoSpace's massive promise in an interview with eCompany Now this way: "The [wireless] carriers will pay InfoSpace $1 to $3 per month for each subscriber. You can do the math. That's a shitload of money."
Sarin visted India in early 2000, either just before he took on the Infospace job or soon after.
I ran into him courtesy his brother, a former army officer from Noida who called my office and said: "Does anyone want to meet and interview my brother, Arun Sarin?"
I'd never heard of Sarin then, but spoke to him and found him very engaging and passionate about technology.
One of my colleagues went ahead and interviewed him but we never featured that interview in print. I think it ran online and then, when the bubble burst and the website where it had appeared took on a new look, it disappeared into ether. The colleague is around and runs an interesting site targetted at venture capitalists.
Sarin became a household name (not literally, but surely, in a country of 320-plus million mobile phones, the CEO of a large global telco can be described thus?) in India after he became CEO of Vodafone, and even more so after his company's deal with Bharti Airtel in 2005 and its more recent acquisition of Hutchison's Indian operations
I met Sarin along with his new partner Airtel's Sunil Mittal soon after they announced the 2005 deal.
As they sat next to each other, it was difficult not to notice the similarities between the two men (not in terms of how they looked but how they spoke).
They also seemed to get along very well.
I remember asking them if at all they lapsed into Punjabi when talking with each other.
Sarin just laughed.
And a rueful Mittal admitted that his new partner could understand Punjabi but not speak it very well.