LG India's mobile phone business head Sudhin Mathur

LG India's mobile phone business head Sudhin Mathur has put in his papers after a one-year stint with the company. LG, the country's largest consumer durable firm, became the third largest GSM handset brand after Mathur joined, but this year it lost ground to the Indian brands, according to third-party studies.

One of Mr Mathur's main responsibilities—who is credited to have built Sony Ericsson's business as its India head from 2002 to 2009—was to re-organise LG's mobile phone business so that it could achieve its longterm goal of becoming the top two' handset brands in India. While industry rumours suggest Mr Mathur had to quit since he fell short of LG's expectations, Mr Mathur and LG officials denied it.

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"It is true I am moving out of LG, but the decision is purely for personal reasons. I plan to start something of my own pretty soon and will announce it at the right time," Mr Mathur told ET. LG India MD Moon B Shin too denied these rumours. "He was quite OK," Mr Shin said, when asked about Mr Mathur's performance at LG.

The Korean company has elevated one of its old hands, Vishal Chopra to head its mobile phone business. Chopra has been with LG India for the past 12 years and has managed sales for several product lines like television, direct cool and frost free refrigerator.

LG became India's third largest mobile phone vendor in the second-half of 2009 with an 8.4% share, next to Samsung with 11% share and market leader Nokia (51.5% share), according to latest IDC stats. This was the time when Mr Mathur had taken charge.

However, latest IDC figures reveal LG lost its third spot to G'Five brand in the first half (Jan-June ) of 2010 and did not even figure amongst the top five brands. LG, however, said it's still the third largest brand with 7.6% market share as of September 2010 as compared to 8.1% of last year. LG India's mobile phone business had seen several changes of guards in the last few years.

In the last five years, three professionals headed the business: HS Bhatia, then Anil Arora and eventually Sudhin Mathur. The latest chief, Chopra has a huge task in hand as LG plans to grow market share to more than 10% and mobile phone revenues by 80% to $500 million over the year.