Micromax: Scaling the Largest Indian Mobile Handset Company

It is January 2014 and Rahul Sharma, cofounder of Micromax Informatics (Micromax), the largest Indian mobile handset company, is preparing for an emergency conference call with his private equity investors. In the last six years, Micromax had grown its annual product revenues from $54M to over $1B. Unfortunately, it was difficult for the founding team to keep up with Micromax's rapid growth, triggering a series of missteps in 2010 that brought the company close to catastrophe. In response, investors had convinced Sharma and his cofounders to hire their first outside CEO, Deepak Mehrotra, and several senior professionals. With the founders working alongside the new "professionals," frequent overlaps and sometimes run-ins occurred. Now, both Mehrotra and the head of their smartphone division had resigned. Sharma evaluates their options: Would the founders need to reconsider their involvement in the company they created? Or was there still a middle ground where both founders and professionals could coexist in the business?