[Venkatesh]

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra has quit the company after the US carmaker announced it will stop making cars in India.

Mehrotra is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities as reported and will be replaced by Balasundaram Radhakrishnan.

Source

[akash_v12]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra has quit the company after the US carmaker announced it will stop making cars in India.

This can't possibly be shocking, can it? I mean, what's the guy supposed to do? With Ford leaving India as a production hub, I'd expect him to stick around for nothing more than 6 months, even if there are products that might launch in the future.

[JoshMachine]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra has quit the company after the US carmaker announced it will stop making cars in India.

Decision on predictable lines.

He has been at the helm of Sales & Marketing throughout his career - championed the cause at services companies like Accenture and WNS Global, and at Ford for the last few years, where his position is President and MD.
Any self-respecting head honcho will take more or less the same decision.

Alongwith him, Ford India will also most likely see exit of its Product Manager(s) lineage.

The article quoted above also says Anurag will be replaced by another guy, wonder what his KRA (key result areas) would be.

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra has quit the company after the US carmaker announced it will stop making cars in India.

Mr. Mehrotra must have conveyed this much before to Ford Management, but probably requested to not make it public before they made the news of Ford's exit official.

Nothing surprising, in fact, was waiting when this would be public.

[jithin23]

Not surprising at all. In fact I feel he should have stepped down earlier itself. I knew it when they were giving half baked answers to our feedbacks and pipeline for Euro spec cars in India.

One good thing was he brought the maintenance and spares costs to the level of a two wheeler and this kind of maintenance cost is hard to come by in the industry. 8k for Endeavor and 4-5k for rest of the portfolio is quite reasonable. In fact much cheaper than our Indo Japs or the big T.

One more thing which I feel he could have avoided was this famous dialogue in all our owners group sync ups is "Thank you for purchasing a Ford, it's because of you all that my kids go to school". I don't intend to be rude or offensive but a person of his stature does not require to say this out loud.

[itsbaman]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra has quit the company after the US carmaker announced it will stop making cars in India.

And this guy sent me an email with the hashtag #CommittedToServeYou. Looks like he is not committed anymore.

[GTO]

Thanks for sharing, Venkatesh! Moving to a new thread.

@ BHPians, if you should spot any good post in an existing thread that deserves its own new thread, please report the post and we'll move it out for greater visibility.

Thank you!

[eccentric]

True to the adage, "Like rats fleeing a sinking ship!"

Saw this coming as Ford announced their exit. Well, this news hits a lot later than expected!

[gkveda]

Some may think his exit is the result of Ford's decision to stop production. But I think he is one of the main causes for Ford's current situation. Who else has to be made responsible for all their wrong strategies? For instance, Endeavour engine size reduction or be it removals of features in their products? According to me, these are all the blunders created by him due to which Ford is in this situation.

I somehow see a small ray of hope that the next CEO turns around the Ford's decision and start improving their situation to continue business in India.

Donot have any data to prove but some deja vu effect. May be it may turn untrue

[YashD]

He has been quite high headed as a leader in India, not being disrespectful but the guy was too conservative completely relying on old school strategies without any innovations or ground breaking products fearing heavy losses on investments and well look what we ended up with?

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by gkveda

Who else has to be made responsible for all their wrong strategies? For instance, Endeavour engine size reduction or be it removals of features in their products? According to me, these are all the blunders created by him due to which Ford is in this situation.

I am not familiar with Ford India management style or structure (and nor a Ford owner) but in my years of experience in a foreign MNC, these kind of calls are very rarely left to the 'local management'. The latter is generally directed to carry out extensive market research, forecasts etc, and present a menu of options. However, (and I would love to be corrected on this), the final call is always taken by Regional HO or the Corporate HO.

This is especially true for a catastrophically bleeding MNC which is urgently assessing it's ROI across all developing countries. Again, factor in the SKD nature of the Endeavour as well. Any decisions taken in the RHD mother factory will have direct implications on Indian operations.

Blaming Mr. Mehrotra for not stopping the 3.2 phase-out or not introducing the Bi-turbo is facile in my opinion.

[SnS_12]

The man was responsible for turning around the company and also guided the company to post a profit in fiscal 2018 after remaining in the red for years.

Later on he was a key architect of the proposed Ford India's alliance with Mahindra & Mahindra, and was set to take over as the chief executive of their joint venture on April 1 2021. However, in February this year he returned as the head of Ford India by taking over from Bala Radhakrishnan, the acting president and MD of Ford India Pvt (FIPL) for the past 10 months just weeks after the proposed joint venture between the US automaker and Mahindra & Mahindra was called off.

And now Mr. Bala is back as the top Boss.

All this juggling around at the top of the management chain was a sign of things to come and maybe the top bosses in the US had already made it clear what their plans was long back for the Indian operations, who were making desperate attempts including proposing a JV with Mahindra to keep their ship afloat and now their captain has abandoned ship when all attempts failed..

[ajmat]

It is quite possible that Anurag had no idea about Fords decision. He would have been heavily and emotionally invested in turning around Ford India. The Mahindra fiasco was a bad blow but you continue to live in hope. Ford literally walked out on him!

By quitting, he will find peace!

[su1978]

From some insider, I hear that he was fired. He was given the option of either leaving in a much more respectable way or he would have been publicly humiliated. He chose the former. Americans were sick and tired of the repeated failure of the Indian sales and marketing teams.

Secondly, since he was the top boss, he is to be held responsible for all the fiasco. Let me sum it up as per my understanding. Firstly, when Chennai operations was not running full capacity, what was need to start a second factory. Secondly, being an Indian, and having led various top companies, what was his understanding of the Indian market. Did he believe the market to be something like-give them a product and just keep on making minor cosmetic changes to it and the public will accept it as a new product. Am sure he is a highly educated person but am also sure that he is not street smart. He missed out on critical points. He missed out seeing easy things(what's easy to see is easy to miss). Thirdly, ford may blame government rules, but KIA and MG came much later and are struggling to meet demand.

In-fact, the first step of Ford in India was a wrong one. Both Ford and Hyundai started at almost the same time, in the same city, 30 kilometers apart, 25 years back. While Hyundai launched Santro, Ford launched the Escort. It was a wrong launch at that time. India was just trying to move up from Maruti 800 and Ford Escort was an unearthly car which did not have much demand. Hyundai wanted to move the ladder very slowly by gauging the market mood and sentiment. Look where they are now. And look where Ford now is.

They came to India in a JV with Mahindra. They had already dumped them once. Not sure what was the motive behind tying up with once more and wanting to get dumped.

Ford never got a hold of the market dynamics from day 1. They kept on doing blunders(wrong products, heavy maintenance cost etc) Anurag, being from the service sector, bettered the service front. But he faulted at the marketing and sales front which were never his forte. Even his subordinates (Raina & CO.) seemed clueless and were never visible. Do not remember seeing a proper full page advertisement. Maruti/Hyundai/Mercedes/Audi/Volvo, all have done it and are regularly doing it. At the most, Ford appeared on page 3 on one-eighth of the page in the corner where no one ever looks.

Let me give an example. Once i took my Ford Freestyle Titanium+ petrol model to one of the cousin's place. He stays in Gurgaon and works for one of the top 3 software companies. He saw my car, exclaimed and said-Wow!, imported car

[LEOMAN]

This is sad news. It was bound to come after ford stepped down manufacturing . I know Anurag sir personally and have visited the plant last year feb 2020 before the pandemic happened . All in all a great personality , commitment and down to earth.
Ford leaving was a big shocker to enthusiasts but this is even more brutal.I own a ford endeavour 3.2 4x4 titanium and I am very satisfied with the product ,service and its very affordable all credit to Anurag sir for his vision.