Mayank Pareek, who has resigned as Chief Operating Officer of Maruti Suzuki (Marketing & Sales), is tipped to take up a leadership role at Tata Motors.
This could either be as Managing Director, heading both the car and truck operations, or as Executive Director of the company’s passenger vehicle business unit. At present, Ravi Pisharody is ED of the commercial vehicle business unit.
Car focusPareek’s strengths are clearly in the car space and, in particular, marketing where he played a major role at Maruti for over two decades.
Tata Motors needs these skills for its car business, which has been in a free fall for some years now leaving it with a market share of barely 5 per cent.
The recently launched Zest has been positioned to kick off the turnaround plan. The Bolt hatchback will follow in a couple of months and this is where the company will need someone like Pareek to recreate his Maruti magic.
“It will be quite a challenge for him to get customers over to a company which has lost its way lately,” a senior marketing executive of a rival automaker said. According to him, the Tata brand has taken quite a beating after the Nano where the cheap car tag only ended up becoming a disincentive for potential buyers. The company is now keen on setting right this image and has pulled out all stops in refurbishing dealerships and training personnel.
It is in this backdrop that Pareek will be expected to play a critical role in injecting the marketing team with new ideas and concepts. He did this very successfully at Maruti where some initiatives like micro-marketing zeroed in on a host of potential customers in rural India.
Tata Motors has been looking for a Managing Director since the passing away of Karl Slym last January.
While Pisharody has been steering the commercial vehicle business, Ranjit Yadav is President and the senior most person for passenger vehicles. As part of its revival strategy running up to 2020, the company has indicated that it is keen on launching at least two new cars every year.