[moralfibre]

As per a press report from LiveMint, Three of TATA Motors' executives have quit the company.

Three executives have quit Tata Motors Ltd’s passenger vehicles unit, which under its president Mayank Pareek is trying to engineer a turnaround in the Indian market, where the automobile maker’s market share has halved in four years.

Virat Khullar, who was in charge of product marketing at Tata Motors, left in April and has joined Renault India Pvt. Ltd as head of marketing.
Vijaya Rajalakshmi, who was brought on board in August as chief of customer experience, quit in March, according to two people familiar with the development.

Ranjit Yadav, who joined as president of the passenger vehicles unit in 2012 and was later made head of international business after the company hired Pareek in September 2014 to head the domestic unit, left the company on 28 April, the people said, on condition of anonymity.

Read the entire report here.

[harishpr]

Great news. After the disaster TATA saw with bolt and zest (both are extremely capable machines, but failed miserably), it's fit for the entire top management to be booted out.
Tata should take a leaf outta M&M, Royal Enfield to find a way to build a new image and regain the lost spot.
If suzuki, hyundai, Toyota, Honda can do wonders with same Indian engineers, Indian marketing Indian sales folks, Why can't Tata do it.

[Aditya]

Earlier this year, we reported that Ranjit Yadav, who had joined Tata Motors as President, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit in 2012, had quit the company click here to read report. Now, two more executives are reported to have resigned.

Vijaya Rajalakshmi, who had joined Tata Motors in August as chief of customer experience, quit in March. The second executive to leave is Virat Khullar, who was in charge of product marketing. He quit in April and has joined Renault India as head of marketing.

This takes the number of executives to have left the company in less than a year to six. Venkatram Mamillapalle, head of purchases, Rajesh Bagga, head of human resources and legal, and Ankush Arora, senior vice-president (commercial-passenger vehicle business) resigned from the company in July 2014. Yadav, Arora and Mamillapalle were hired by Karl Slym, Tata Motors' late managing director.

Tata Motors has had a rough run in the passenger vehicle market. Its share has fallen from 13.97% to 6.22% between 2010-11 and 2014-15. The passenger vehicle segment expanded from 2.5 million units to 2.6 million units during the same period.

Mayank Pareek, Chief Operating Officer of Maruti Suzuki, quit the company to join Tata Motors in September 2014. He is trying to improve the company's performance in the Indian market.

Source: Live Mint

[jkrishnakj]

I only hope it turns out good for Tata Motors. For all the goodness that one can read about the Xest and the Bolt, the numbers dont stack up.

Given the fact that they plan to release several new models in the immediate future, these top level movements should perhaps bring about a change in the way they market and service the cars to improve the sales and service experiences going forward.

[arnabchak]

Originally Posted by jkrishnakj

I only hope it turns out good for Tata Motors. For all the goodness that one can read about the Xest and the Bolt, the numbers dont stack up.

Given the fact that they plan to release several new models in the immediate future, these top level movements should perhaps bring about a change in the way they market and service the cars to improve the sales and service experiences going forward.

A change in the top management and that too, such a high churn speaks of internal management turmoil.

A new set of management personnel will take a 18 month turn around timeline to make any changes visible.
So, that state of affairs at Tata Motors remains vulnerable!!

[arjab]

Let's hope TML gets itself even better personnel than the people who have resigned, who will pull the company out of the quagmire.

The downside of all these reshuffling is that the middle & lower (read field level staff), starts to lose confidence in the company's top guys.

Add the fact that some of these low to mid level guys will certainly, in a few months time, tag along with their "ex-boss's" and join the "ex-boss's" team in the "ex-boss's" new company. Because the "ex-boss" more often than not, would want his "coterie" around him!

Since most of these low-mid level guys operate directly with the dealers in various states and regions, the dealer confidence w.r.t the OEM also gets dented.

It's not that this kind of churn is insurmountable, but when a new team substitutes itself in place of the one's who have left, the new team will require a minimum of 6 months, just to fathom the status of things, in a large and complex marketing structure like TML.
Then the new team, either, starts implementing the previous team's good work or starts tweaking the stuff according to their liking.

Vital time is lost. Competition starts eating up valuable market share space.
Dealers get disenchanted.
And in a worst case scenario, some dealers may quit as well.

Wish all the best to our "desi" car company and let's hope one day TML will also be akin to, and become a "Hyundai" in the global automotive world.

[vinit.merchant]

Originally Posted by harishpr

Great news. After the disaster TATA saw with bolt and zest (both are extremely capable machines, but failed miserably), it's fit for the entire top management to be booted out.
Tata should take a leaf outta M&M, Royal Enfield to find a way to build a new image and regain the lost spot.
If suzuki, hyundai, Toyota, Honda can do wonders with same Indian engineers, Indian marketing Indian sales folks, Why can't Tata do it.

I would not consider it as great news and also do not agree with "its fit for the entire top management to be booted out". At this rate, except for Maruti, Hyundai, & Mahindra, every other car manufacturer will have to keep booting out its top management every couple of years.
Tata has lost the trust of its customers and it is going to take a lot of time for them to get it back. The failure of the Bolt & Zest is mainly because of this. Because I felt the cars were marketed quite well. Bolt lost it for pricing though, but there was no doubt Tata went all out advertising the cars and had the right approach. They are heading in the right direction, though are not getting the customer support, understandably.
To Mahindra, it lost the rural market completely which I agree. But RE is a completely different game. It had a huge fan following which came back in huge numbers to buy the new launches. Tata cars hardly have any fan following.

[Rehaan]

I'm sure this is related news : link

[veyron_head]

Originally Posted by vinit.merchant

Tata has lost the trust of its customers and it is going to take a lot of time for them to get it back. The failure of the Bolt & Zest is mainly because of this. Because I felt the cars were marketed quite well.

Couldn't agree more. Its as if their cars aren't being bought merely because its made by them. Now, that has to do with the brand itself, not the cars.

I found the Vista and Manza extremely competent and both had a strong USP - Space, which at least at that time was unmatched by rivals. Yet, both didn't do as well as expected.

Tata could do with a complete re-branding exercise.

[dark.knight]

My opinion is that Tata Motors must rebrand its light motor vehicle division, it has certainly been done before by other manufacturers, GM is an expert in it.

The Tata brand itself is too complicated, there is salt, hotels, steel, telephony, airlines, software etc. There are existing sub-brands within the group like Titan, Tanishq, Xylys (their premium watch brand), Voltas among few more.. these do not have the name Tata in them and thus have a different identity/perception from its parent company as far as most people are concerned. That is not to say that the name is the reason the cars aren't selling but something hasn't worked so far & its better to create as much changes as possible in a bid to re-brand its image.

- New name for the LMV division, Tata can surely come up with something.
- New design completely different from the Indica/Vista body shell. That has gone on for far too long.
- Sleeker designs with better practicality (boot-space)
- New logo not involving the letter T, should be smaller and more attractive.
- Hire an all new design & marketing team (can even tap into JLR division).
- Give the best warranty & service terms.

I know none of this is easy and if they do so it would take years but its the only sure way to up their sales. The old models can continue as a taxi-segment brand if necessary.