Unikie has strengthened its U.S. operations by appointing Petri Talala as Vice President & General Manager of Unikie Inc. Mr Talala accelerates Unikie’s business growth and runs the U.S. office based in Boulder, Colorado.
Despite the ongoing market uncertainties Unikie’s 2020 net sales is rocketing and has estimated to grow 3-4X vs. 2019 in the USA. Growth is mainly coming from California where Jussi Mäntynen continues to lead the local operations as General Manager since early 2018.
“Now it is the right moment to strengthen the presence in the USA to ensure business growth in year 2021 onwards as well. Petri Talala will have a core role to make it happen. Talala has a strong experience of the digital business creation in the United States and now he is taking the responsibility from Unikie’s North American growth strategy and business development”, says Vesa Kiviranta, SVP, International Sales at Unikie.
Talala has several years of experience working in the U.S. market. For the past 2.5 years, he has introduced new digital business models at Vaisala Inc. Before that Talala served as Idean’s EVP of Growth & Strategy, leading multi-talented teams across the United States and creating the fast-paced growth in digital design business. With his background and experience, he is keen to build a strong growth for Unikie Inc. in the U.S. market.
”Last several years I have had a privilege to collaborate with amazing people and leading global companies around digital innovations, business transformations, and the customer centered insights. In parallel there continues to be an increasing expertise demand for mobility, connectivity, complex data management, real-time computation to ensure on-going technology innovations especially in this new environment we live today. I see great opportunity for Unikie to help making many of these complex things simple”, Mr Talala explains.
The transformation of the automotive industry will open up the market for Unikie
The U.S. has been leading the significant transformation in automotive industry. The on-going transformation offers perfect match to Unikie’s core offering, capabilities and expertise, as evidenced by the strong initial growth in our business in the United States.
“At the same time we believe our growth to be in early stage and that our expertise will be needed for many years to come globally, not only in the USA”, believes Mr Talala.
”Autonomous transportation is very close to my heart and there we see vehicles to become mobility robots where deep technology, AI, machine learning, data fusion and several other highly demanding software innovations will happen. In addition we should not forget we are solving complex topics for us (humans). At Unikie we can get hands dirty immediately by helping industry to continue pushing the limits of the technology for simpler and safer experiences. As a bonus I strongly believe it will be a lot fun too”, Mr Talala concludes.
