Indian computer engineers may have earned uncharitable reviews from the Microsoft top brass, but Indian marketing men are making the company sit up and take notice of their performance.

The case in point is Salil Kapoor, ex-marketing head of LG Electronics India, who was appointed by Microsoft India as marketing head-consumer audience.

Kapoor's recruitment suggests the company is laying greater stress on marketing. The company's marketing efforts till now have concentrated on the corporate sector and public sector clients.

At LG, Kapoor was promoted as marketing head a year ago for his performance in the AC division of the company, which saw record sales growth from 18 per cent to 40 per cent.

As marketing head, he was responsible for driving retail visibility of the brand and also the consolidation of their various campaigns which saw the over Rs 100-crore (Rs billion) worth of advertising business take a churn and was finally split three-ways between Lowe, McCann-Erickson and O&M.

Kapoor completed his mechanical engineering from Bangalore and business graduation from FMS (Delhi). Kapoor started his career at Bluestart and then moved to LGEIL where he worked for seven years.

Kapoor said that he would be responsible for the urban end of the consumer business at Microsoft. The company also has plans for reaching the rural consumers.