Satish Borwankar is new Tata Motors COO; Ravindra Pisharody quits as ED

Tata Motors has appointed Satish Borwankar as chief operating officer (COO) of the company with immediate effect. His tenure as executive director would be extended for a period of two years from July 2017, the company said in a statement to stock exchanges.

The company also announced that Ravindra Pisharody had resigned from the post of executive director (commercial vehicles) for personal reasons. Pisharody also resigned as director of the company and its associated firms. He had been an executive director on the Tata Motors board for almost five years, since June 2012. Tata Motors said his successor would be announced soon.

New COO Borwankar, a mechanical engineer from IIT Kanpur, started his career with Tata Motors in 1974. He was appointed executive director-quality on the Tata Motors board in June 2012. He has worked in various executive positions, overseeing and implementing product development, manufacturing operations and quality control initiatives of the CV business. He was also the head of the company’s Jamshedpur plant.

Pisharody’s resignation comes at a time when the company has witnessed a slowdown in sales of its commercial vehicles (CV) in the domestic market. The company’s CV sales grew by a mere 0.45 per cent to 305,620 units in FY17. In May 2017, the CV sales in the domestic market were at 23,606 units, down 13 per cent from the same month last year.

Prior to becoming the executive director, Pisharody was the president of Tata Motors’ CV division since June 2009.