Maruti Suzuki creates new management tier

New Delhi|Mumbai: India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki has created a new management tier by rejigging its top cadre to ensure continuity as it prepares for the new partnership with Toyota and readies for the new emission norms by 2020. The move was announced internally at a meet in Kochi during the weekend.
The newly formed executive board includes five Indian executives under the role of a senior executive officer from critical functions of R&D, production, sales and marketing, finance and HR along with a Japanese director. The executive board will not only be tracking the dynamic changes in the Indian automotive industry but also become a bridge between Suzuki and external shareholders. It will play a key strategic role in defining the long term roadmap for Maruti Suzuki and help in executing the Toyota Suzuki partnership in the Indian market.

CV Raman, senior executive officer for R&D, Rajiv Gandhi, senior executive officer for Production, RS Kalsi, senior executive officer for sales, marketing, service, logistics, Ajay Seth, senior executive officer for finance and legal and Rajesh Uppal, the senior executive officer for HR and IT are part of this executive board. The Japanese director on the executive board is K Yamaguchi.

Besides, the domestic sales and marketing positions too have changed. Shashank Srivastava is now the executive officer overseeing sales along with T Hashimoto, whereas the marketing responsibility will be handled by Tarun Garg in the executive officer role. The sales and network for Arena will be under Ram Suresh Akella.

The new setup will not only ensure continuity in long term strategy but create room for succession planning, with several of executive board members were due for retirement in 2019-2020 say people in the know. To be sure, Kenichi Ayukawa recently got an extension of his term by another three years, having completed five years at the helms of the company as MD. Despite repeated attempts to reach Maruti Suzuki spokesperson, ET could not elicit any response.