Things Mayank Pareek is expected to do at Tata Motors
Pareek has been tasked with the responsibility of turning around the passenger car business of Tata Motors
Tata Motors Ltd’s decision to hire Maruti Suzuki India Ltd’s former chief operating officer Mayank Pareek is perhaps the most notable appointment of a top manager in the automobile industry after V. Sumantran quit Tata Motors to join Ashok Leyland Ltd as vice-chairman in 2005.
Pareek has been tasked with the responsibility of turning around the passenger car business of Tata Motors. Pareek has been credited with boosting Maruti Suzuki’s market share after it hit a trough in 2012 when the company faced a series of labour strikes and an incident of mob violence that killed a senior executive at the firm. Since then, Maruti has increased its market share by five percentage points to 44.62% at the end of August. During the same period, Tata Motors’s market share declined six percentage points to 5.7%. Its newest sub-four meter Zest sedan is yet to make a mark.
• Sell, sell and sell (a Tata car)
There cannot be any other mandate given to Pareek by Cyrus Mistry but to sell cars. A sales veteran Pareek always had some new tricks up his sleeve—be it identifying semi-automatic transmission market by launching Celerio at Maruti or driving Maruti’s rural programme, which is by far the biggest in the country.
At Tata, however, he would have to deal with customers who have lost faith in the brand. Read a Mint story on the topic here.
• Focus on quality
He has to fight the perception that the brand is associated with low-quality products. Though, Tata’s newest Zest model is a step in the right direction, Pareek needs to ensure that future products meet or exceed global standards. Tata Motors executives say that a product plan till 2020, framed by its late managing director Karl Slym, is already in place and all Pareek needs to do is ensure a smooth execution.
• Straight talk with dealers
When the market looks down, it is the dealers’ job to convince customers to buy a particular product. Clearly, this is not the case with Tata dealers. With Pareek coming on board, he will probably make dealers pursue a more aggressive strategy to sell cars.
• Tata bureaucracy
Pareek will have to make sure that the Tata bureaucracy does not come in between the things that he wants to do and the traditional way of how things work at the company. His appointment may have raised some eyebrows within the organization but for now he seems to have a “free hand" from the Tata chairman.
• Sell my sweet, little Nano
Personally, selling the Nano will be Pareek’s biggest challenge. Tatas have failed to sell the product because of a series of missteps including selling the car through a lottery system and branding it as the cheapest car. In August, as few as 758 units of Nanos were sold, a 64% drop from a year earlier.
No doubt, Pareek is a great addition to the Tata Motor’s top management. He is probably the best guy to handle the toughest job in the Indian automotive industry.
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