[n.devdath]

Mr. Ravindra Pisharody, the Executive Director and Head of Tata Motors CV business has put his papers quoting "personal reasons". He will continue to serve TML till required by the management.

I have had the fortune of meeting him a few times at launches and conferences and he came across as a composed, mature gentleman who was adept at taking the team together.


Tata Motors have appointed Satish Borwankar as their new COO in place of Mr.Pisharody.

The CV market is facing tumultuous times, especially after the BS-IV dates were frozen by the SC and a lot of OEMs had significant stocks of B-III vehicles and such senior level departures can be a clear indication of the ripple effects of the hardships OEMs are facing.

Source: http://auto.economictimes.indiatimes...otors/59002281

[GTO]

That's quite a body blow to what is Tata Motor's most important division in India. The CV business contributes to an overwhelming part of their revenue & profits from India.

I remember reading an article recently which stated that the board of directors was extremely concerned about Tata's CV business losing a couple of points of market-share. Hope that's not the reason as the CV business is cyclical in nature.

[arjab]

Originally Posted by GTO

I remember reading an article recently which stated that the board of directors was extremely concerned about Tata's CV business losing a couple of points of market-share. Hope that's not the reason

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
According to an insider that is most probably the reason. Apparently the writing was on the wall for the last few months as TML CVBU lost ground to competition.
Pisharody was a thorough gentleman. He was brought in by Ravi Kant from Philips(?), am not sure, to head the Marketing and Sales of the CV unit. Did a commendable job according to many insider's but it seems it still did not cut much ice with the top management

[Ashley2]

Cause and effect?

The declining market share of medium and heavy duty truck and bus business at India’s largest auto maker Tata Motors Ltd has attracted the attention of its board, two people aware of the development said, asking not to be identified.

In the past couple of years, the leader in high-tonnage trucks and buses has lost much ground to rival Ashok Leyland Ltd.

In 2016-17, Tata Motors’ share of the medium and heavy duty commercial vehicles (MHCV) segment, including buses, fell to 49.2% from 51.9% a year ago, as per the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). The fall was led by a decline in market share of heavy duty trucks to 53% in fiscal 2017 from 58% in fiscal 2015.

In May, Tata Motors MHCV truck sales fell 40%, while overall commercial vehicles sales dropped 13% to 23,606 units from a year ago.

Link here

[D33-PAC]

What a joke to pin it all on one person. TATA has been in shambles for a while now.

Nano was the dumbest thing on earth. Nobody will buy a car that screams "I don't have a lot of money". Ratan Tata and his gang all hang out with the elite of the world and yet with all his foreign knowledge and education and high flying IIM McKinsey BCG yada yada yada geniuses they could not figure out that the price of the car is as important as the product itself.

The Nano was never 1 lakh - it was more than that after tax and once you consider the price and its price range after tax, people will automatically choose to spend a marginal amount more for a better product in the price range (which is why the Suzuki Alto with a bigger engine and more comforts crushed the Nano).

Then there was the Corus Steel deal in the UK. What kind of genius buys a cyclical business at the top of the cycle ? What are your IIM and foreign educated executives thinking ? And these people fly in private jets but don't have common sense about cycles.

TATA is like the Indian government. Nobody owns anything, so the incentive to do a good job isn't taken seriously, and nothing ever is the fault of one person since it's the collective mindset that damages the mindset.

This goes right from the top to the Chairman to the assembly line workers who couldn't even properly assemble the clock in the Tata Sumo Grande that I once owned.


TATA needs to suck it up and actually create a good product in the market place. Mediocrity in such a large scale operation is never the fault of one person. Since these people needed to save face on the board someone had to go. LOSERS TO THE CORE. The entire episode with Cyrus Mistry was also highly immature and silly. It looked like a teenage girls gossiping and fighting.

[deetjohn]

I think the BS3 debacle didn't help Mr. Ravindra Pisharody at all.

Tata was sitting on the biggest pile of 'not fit for sale' BS3 vehicles in the commercial segment.

Take a look at this clip from Hindu which I had posted in the 'predicament of 900,000 unsold BS-III vehicles' thread.


And Tata' response was also pretty poor. They called the Supreme Court ban an unexpected and unprecedented move.

[Sawyer]

Originally Posted by GTO

The CV business contributes to an overwhelming part of their revenue & profits from India.

Hope that's not the reason as the CV business is cyclical in nature.

I have no idea at all about the merits of this case, but just pointing out that cyclicality and losing share are two different things. The first can result in loss of volumes, but is no justification of losing share; that is a double whammy for a company characterised by the first part quoted.

The good/aggressive companies always look to pick up share in a downturn because not being busy filling the order book as in an upturn releases resources to do just this. Unless those resources are only good in taking orders in an upturn.

[Ashley2]

Originally Posted by D33-PAC

What a joke to pin it all on one person. TATA has been in shambles for a while now.

Nano was the dumbest thing on earth. Nobody will buy a car that screams "I don't have a lot of money". Ratan Tata and his gang all hang out with the elite of the world and yet with all his foreign knowledge and education and high flying IIM McKinsey BCG yada yada yada geniuses they could not figure out that the price of the car is as important as the product itself.

The Nano was never 1 lakh - it was more than that after tax and once you consider the price and its price range after tax, people will automatically choose to spend a marginal amount more for a better product in the price range (which is why the Suzuki Alto with a bigger engine and more comforts crushed the Nano).

Then there was the Corus Steel deal in the UK. What kind of genius buys a cyclical business at the top of the cycle ? What are your IIM and foreign educated executives thinking ? And these people fly in private jets but don't have common sense about cycles.

TATA is like the Indian government. Nobody owns anything, so the incentive to do a good job isn't taken seriously, and nothing ever is the fault of one person since it's the collective mindset that damages the mindset.

This goes right from the top to the Chairman to the assembly line workers who couldn't even properly assemble the clock in the Tata Sumo Grande that I once owned.


TATA needs to suck it up and actually create a good product in the market place. Mediocrity in such a large scale operation is never the fault of one person. Since these people needed to save face on the board someone had to go. LOSERS TO THE CORE. The entire episode with Cyrus Mistry was also highly immature and silly. It looked like a teenage girls gossiping and fighting.

Mr.Pisharody has nothing to do with Nano and its related failures. It was work of a guy called Girish Wagh. There were too many ways it was cost cut and there it started to roll down. In my view, Nano exposed what quality is to Tata. If pricing was the actual issue for lesser sales, no body would have rushed to book that car. Bookings were not in hundreds but in thousands and lakhs.(If marketing was a failure then in first shot no body would have turned towards it) And not to mention many were actually second time car buyers. Since there were many fire accidents and main stream media was continuously making stories about that, people started to cancel. There are many evidences for large scale mass bookings and withdrawal subsequently. It was product development failure rather than a marketing failure.

The effect of Nano started to feel on sales of other passenger cars and their sales too started to fall from 2009-2010 continuously. So my view is it's not product position, but lack of quality and lose of faith in brand Tata to deliver a trouble free product.

Now coming to commercial vehicle business, Tata is facing stiff competition in all segments including SCV where they were pretty strong. Though the situation is nothing to panic, but sales is falling continuously.
When BS III issues propped out, Tata was selling CV's at a rock bottom price and it made a huge dent in balance sheet. Irony is many chassis were getting delivered till May second week. So all this would have taken a toll on his role.

[Sawyer]

I have a different view about Nano; I believe it was a marketing failure, right from the concept stage. To start, no one thought through the fact that at 16-18 km to the litre the running costs are at least three times that of a 100 cc motorcycle, whose user was the target market. Even at 1 lakh, the latter remains an issue and a hurdle to buying the car in the target market - otherwise used Nanos would be selling like hot cakes today. And the building of 20,000 per month capacity was based on not realising the impact of this issue - for which Ratan Tata is directly responsible, though he keeps ascribing Nano failure to poor marketing by his marketing teams.

Second, the fire thing was mismanaged by being addressed - successfully - only in engineering terms when what was needed was high quality and aggressive PR to manage the entire episode. In terms of overall build quality, the Nano is actually very good and my 2013 car is witness to that. For Indian inner city use, there is no car that does the job better.

But the Tata perception for making cars fit only for the taxi trade by a company with a truck making DNA dates back to Indica. And that culture is still not rooted out - even the Hexa has niggles that are unacceptable for a modern car maker. Yes, they get fixed in after sales, but that isn't the point.

In general, Tata does a very poor job in the B2C market place. The sole exception to this is Titan.

As to Pisharody, I don't know the story, but if CV shares are dropping in a market in a downturn, it is a cause for big concern for TML. Any BS issues may have then been the last straw. But this is speculating.

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by deetjohn

I think the BS3 debacle didn't help Mr. Ravindra Pisharody at all.

Tata was sitting on the biggest pile of 'not fit for sale' BS3 vehicles in the commercial segment.

Take a look at this clip from Hindu which I had posted in the 'predicament of 900,000 unsold BS-III vehicles' thread.
Attachment 1646316

And Tata' response was also pretty poor. They called the Supreme Court ban an unexpected and unprecedented move.

This was precisely the issue, the Commercial division management was caught totally wrong footed on BS4, showed terrible foresight and lack of planning!

Dealers were asked to clear stock using heavy discounting which have long term implications in the market. The remaining unsold vehicles are now being transported back to factories to undergo modifications. All this will be very expensive for Tata Motors.

Pisharody's head had to roll, the Commercial vehicle departments domination in the Indian market meant they should be on the offensive and look to increase exports and enter newer segments. Apart from the successful entry in the defense sector Pishorody's cv has very little to boast of in the last 5 years.

High time they get fresh perspective.

[GTO]

Girish Wagh takes over. This just in from Tata:

Tata Motors today announced the appointment of Mr. Girish Wagh as the 'Head of Commercial Vehicle Business Unit' and a member of the Executive Committee (ExCom).

Mr. Girish Wagh will take charge of the new responsibilities with immediate effect and will closely work with Mr. Ravindra Pisharody for a smooth transition.

The replacement of Mr. Wagh as the 'Head of Product Line MHCV' will be announced in due course. In the meanwhile, he will continue to oversee the MHCV related scope of responsibilities.

[Tapish]

Originally Posted by GTO

Girish Wagh takes over. This just in from Tata:

Doesn't make sense. I'm sure wagh was part of the team that made decisions on bs3 vehicles and was a core person overall in the last few years. It doesn't give Tata the fresh perspective they desperately need.

[i74js]

Tata's are working on revival but the business tentacles are so elaborate that they operate in multiple mobility / transportation solutions.

Government of India is hell bent on making a paradigm shift by large scale introduction of EVs in the country and this will spread across multiple spaces within which Tata operates. Mr. Wagh will have to operate in a perpetually challenging environment, which not only includes stiff competition but also the expected changes in CV market with next 5 - 7 years.

Also, being part of a team, wherein though he was shadowed, yet he was also protected would be different compared to when he will be leading and delivering with the group.

Good luck to him.

[speedguy]

Originally Posted by Tapish

Doesn't make sense. I'm sure wagh was part of the team that made decisions on bs3 vehicles and was a core person overall in the last few years. It doesn't give Tata the fresh perspective they desperately need.

He was looking after passenger car business. Precisely he was VP of manufacturing operations (PV). He had nothing to do with CV business from the year 2009.
I hope he will bring the charisma of Ace launch to CV business. Tata needs him badly to deliver

[Tapish]

Originally Posted by speedguy

He was looking after passenger car business. Precisely he was VP of manufacturing operations (PV). He had nothing to do with CV business from the year 2009.
I hope he will bring the charisma of Ace launch to CV business. Tata needs him badly to deliver

Didn't the Tata press release mention that he headed (and still heads) the product line MHCV?

I believe it refers to Medium & Heavy CV. If not, I stand corrected.