Tata Sons, the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata group, has appointed S. Padmanabhan as Executive Chairman of Tata Quality Management Services (TQMS). The appointment is effective July 1, 2014.
Padmanabhan, who will report to Tata Sons Chairman Cyrus P Mistry, will be responsible for driving the business excellence journey across the Tata group of companies globally.
This role will be integral to the group's initiatives in enhancing the performance of Tata companies through diagnostics, benchmarking and sharing best practices, the company said in a statement.
Padmanabhan, who started his career with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has been with the group for more than 32 years.
He was the Executive Director (operations) of Tata Power since 2008 and is responsible for the profitable and sustainable operations of all Tata Power’s thermal and hydro generation plants across India and transmission and distribution systems in Mumbai.
He is also on the board of Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd, Tata Power Trading Company Ltd, Industrial Energy Ltd, Maithon Power Ltd, Powerlinks Transmission Ltd, Trust Energy Resources Pte. Ltd, Tata Consulting Engineers and Infiniti Retail.
Tata group has operations in more than 100 countries across six continents, and export products and services to over 150 countries. Tata companies' revenue stood at $96.79 billion (Rs 527,047 crore) in 2012-13, with 62.7 per cent of this coming from overseas businesses. Tata companies employ over 540,000 people worldwide.