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-   -   Delna Avari, Tata Motors' passenger car marketing head quits (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/172826-delna-avari-tata-motors-passenger-car-marketing-head-quits.html)

Delna Avari, marketing head for Tata Motors' passenger car division, has resigned from the company. It is believed that she has left the organization to start a venture of her own. She will be serving her notice period till April 2016.

Avari has been with Tata Motors since 2001, and has held key positions in multiple divisions at the company. Apart from heading marketing and communication services for Tata Motors, she was the VP of Tata Motors Thailand and Area Manager of Tata Motors Europe. She also had a key role in the repositioning of the Nano and was appointed as the director of Concorde Motors - Tata's auto retail division, last year.



Source: ET Auto

Hope this will bring in much needed fresh thinking at TaMo from Marketing perspective. This was one of the areas key areas TaMo was lacking so far.

Wow, TaMo has had a Marketing Head all along, jokes apart, I bet she was marched out.

If Tata continues to bleed market share at the current rate, I don't see them being around too long.

The company is so big and it's pockets are so deep it takes Senior Mgt waaay too long to react and I reckon that they don't really have an idea of the extent of trouble that they are in.

Anyway hope they get a better Marketing boss.

Quite honestly, I hadn't heard about her until the Zica was unveiled. All the very best for her future endeavors.

As someone said, time to bring in some fresh blood with Gennext philosophy.

Not being biased, since I've worked in the past with Tata Motors, Delna Avari leaving comes as a shock.

You only hear about the max possible level of dedication a person puts in her job, but she was a living breathing example of it. The level of conversation which you can have with her, be it regarding product or the automotive market, it's phenomenal. There were only a few another people apart from Delna who one could have a proper conversation, & none which matched up to her level of caliber.

Also, again not defending, but the success &/or failure of a product cannot be directly tied back to marketing. Yes it plays an important part, yes it helps drive sales, but if that was all it took, there would virtually be no R&D.

Wishing all the best to her in her future Endeavors.

Regards,
Rohan Sachar.

Beg to disagree on this point but I want to share a personal anecdote on role of marketing.

Way back in 2001, a close friend of mine was a senior manager at Concorde Motors Corporate and he was mentioning the difference between Tata and Hyundai. Remember at that time Tata Motors was neck to neck with Hyundai.

Well as the story goes, Tata Motors was quite a pioneer among its peer group (which is Maruti Zen and Hyundai Santro) when they started out. Like first in class to provide wing mirrors on both sides, internally adjustable wing mirrors etc etc. As usual Tata was first to introduce Power steering in the Indica V2 in DLS version. At that time neither the Zen nor the Santro had Power steering.

What Hyundai did was introduce Power Steering in the Santro and branded it as the ZipDrive. They then proceeded to market it to within an inch of its life with a million hoardings and TVCs of SRK and Juhi Chawla. As a result, all the first mover advantage was gobbled up by Hyundai.

The rest is history. Later Tata Motors R&D went to holy hell and they decided (convinced for some reason that inhouse talent was ready) to begin designing their own products. Looking at any Tata vehicle since the original Indica, it seems like a lot of individual good bits which when stuck together have no sense of proportion. Look at any car or SUV that Tata has made (with the exception of the Marina) and it is obvious.

I've interacted and worked with her in the past and I must say that she was one of those people who put their "everything" into their work wholeheartedly.

I wish her all the best and a great future ahead...!!!

Just went through her linkedin profile, very impressive. I wish all the best for her new venture.

When you say that cars like the Zest, Storme and Manza are not competent, I really think you're sharing an opinion rather than a fact. If you have seen the product development and deployment cycle in any large organization, you'd have known that the performance of of a product is very often not dependent on the performance of an individual. If you call the Zest an ugly car, it is more of a statement of your tastes rather than the attribute of the product.
I know people dislike the notion of attaching patriotic sentiments to purchase decisions, but I still think that domestic manufacturers create more value for the country and the customer.
I hope TML appoints someone worthy of the responsibility once again and continues its march towards credibility and excellence.

While I respect your opinion, just 1 point I'd like to highlight in your specific anecdote. Bloated marketing always impacts cost. Tata Motors has always given competent features at a fair cost. Marketing is a word used very loosely, it ties back to every stage in production journey. It's never as simple as letting the world know a specific feature, but a million implications of the same. Best left to professionals to judge.


Storme & Manza owner here! Totally agree with everything you said. Storme to a random person can look like a blank feature tech less SUV, but that was never the case with me personally. And there might be 10,000 other SUV buyers against my opinion, but roughly 750 like me.

TLDR;
To each his own. But that shouldn't undermine the effort put by someone in their career.

In what could be seen as a significant move in the senior levels of management in the auto industry, Vivek B Srivatsa, a former Maruti-Suzuki product group head (marketing) has followed in the steps of former MSIL colleagues Mayank Pareek and SN Burman and has joined Tata Motors.


Srivatsa will take over the role and duties performed by Delna Avari, who was the former marketing head at Tata Motors and had quit the company in April 2016 to start her own business venture. (link)

Before joining Tata Motors, Srivatsa was posted as the marketing director (Middle East) for Renault and was based in Dubai for about an year. Before that, he was overseeing Renault India's marketing operations between 2010 and 2015, after working in MSIL between 2007 and 2010 doing duties between marketing, brand promotion and product development.

He brings along over 23 years of experience in sales and marketing, and is expected to give Tata Motors a much-needed boost in marketing activities in the immediate future.

Business Standard

How can he called ex Maruti, the better term would be ex Renault. He has worked more years for Renault than Maruti. The title given by Business standard is misleading as if a very important person just resigned from Maruti!