Why the old guard is leaving Tata

Mukund Rajan, Chief Ethics Officer of Tata group, has called it a day in the massively diversified conglomerate when high profile exits and lateral hiring have become the new norm. After N Chandrasekaran took over as the chairman a year ago, the group has seen the exit of senior executives like Anil Sardana (CEO, Tata Power), Brotin Banerjee (CEO, Tata Housing), Ravindra Pisharody (President, commercial vehicle business, Tata Motors), Ramamoorthy Ganesh (CEO, Tata Asset Management) and Timothy Leverton (CTO, Tata Motors), in addition to the retirements like that of CR Ramakrishnan (CFO, Tata Motors).
 
At the same time, the group has witnessed new appointments like Saurabh Agrawal (CFO, Tata Sons), PB Balaji (CFO, Tata Motors), Aarthi Subramanian (chief digital officer, Tata group), Shuva Mandal (Group General Counsel), Banmali Agrawala (president, infrastructure, defence and aerospace businesses), Prathit Bhobe (CEO, Tata Asset Management), Puneet Chhatwal (MD & CEO, Indian Hotels), Rajiv Sabharwal (MD& CEO, Tata Capital) and Sanjay Rajoria (MD, TRF).
 
Mukund Rajan tweeted on Thursday, "It has been a wonderful tenure in the Tata group. Looking forward to a new and exciting entrepreneurial journey!" There were news before his exit announcement that he proposed a USD 1 billion bid to acquire the fiber assets of Tata Teleservices, along with private equity and pension funds, including TPG. So his new move indicates that he would re-emerge as an entrepreneur with a business venture.
 
He was part of the ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry's five-member core team along with Nirmalya Kumar, NS Rajan, Madhu Kannan - all the three were external hiring of Mistry and were asked to leave after his removal. But Rajan and another group veteran Harish Bhat were retained by the Tatas to lead other initiatives.
 
The 49-year-old Rajan, who is the younger brother former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan, worked in the group for 23 years after joined as Tata Administrative Service (TAS) Officer. He was Managing Director of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra), Managing Partner of the Tata Opportunities Fund, and Brand Custodian and Member of the Group Executive Council at the Tata group.