Leslie D’Monte

He made Vodafone a household name in India, and now is all set to make his mark online too if a Wall Street report turns out to be true that the former Vodafone Group chief Arun Sarin is close to becoming Yahoo! CEO.

Sarin, 54, retired from Vodafone this May after being CEO of the European telecommunications giant for around five years. He has, among other things, ardently spoke about the mobile Internet, and has had served a stint of less than one year as CEO of InfoSpace in 2000 to 2001, which make him a good candidate for the distant number two online search player. Sarin had reportedly resigned from InfoSpace due to the rigours of commuting between its offices in Washington state and his family’s home in the Bay Area.

Yahoo!, of course, expects to come up with a pool of about a dozen candidates and settle on one within six months, though there’s no firm deadline as such.

The move follows Jerry Yang’s recently decision of stepping down as CEO of Yahoo!. Investors were delighted with the announcement. It helped its ailing stock soar nearly 9 per cent to close at $11.55 on the Nasdaq, a day after the announcement. Of course, the Yahoo! chief — who took the job as CEO in June 2007 to unsuccessfully attempt to spur it to glory again — said he’ll stay on as CEO till a replacement is found (expected in Q1 next year).

The company — founded three years before Google — is now way behind the internet search giant. The Yahoo! Board, reported the Wall Street Journal earlier, is said to be looking for an “anti-Jerry” to turn things around — executives who are not mere thinkers but have strong operational skills who may be veterans of the high-tech and media worlds. Tim Armstrong, a senior vice-president at Google, and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation are reportedly being considered at this stage though there was no confirmation.

However, hiring a replacement CEO with “Chief Yahoo” Yang still at the helm might make things difficult for a stalwart like Sarin who himself has been in-charge of driving things with his own vision.

However, it may be exactly the medicine that the ailing Yahoo! might need with Google and Microsoft breathing down its neck. Besides, if Google has its Eric Schmidt despite the two mavericks in-charge (Larry Page and Sergie Brin), there’s no reason why a Sarin (or some other CEO) should not be able to work with Yang. Watch this space.