It is an annual ritual for the chairman to address the employees and kick off the financial year at Tata Motors with a review of the year gone by – and what lies ahead – from the green lawns of the plush Lake House in Pune.
This time, both N Chandrasekaran, current chairman, and Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus, were not physically present at the venue.
Chandrasekaran applauded the PV leadership team for reviving a dying business and giving it the energy to become a leader. Despite constraints of the chip crisis, Tata Motors posted record annual sales of 370,000 units in FY22, posting a whopping growth of 67%. Chandrasekaran said that “procurement of semiconductor chips throughout this crisis could be a separate case study”.
The chief of human resources read out Tata’s note, which stated: “I couldn’t be there (in person)… but the business has delivered a great turnaround… I hope Tata Motors becomes a great technology company; straddling many segments.”
Tata Motors didn’t comment in response to ET’s mailed queries on the Chairman’s interaction.
Chandrasekaran recalled a stormy, intense meeting on July 9, 2017, after which a series of turnarounds were achieved over five years.
“Be it in engineering, financial health management, working with unions, market share focus and creating a product pipeline,” he said, recalling the turnaround journey for the division that was on the verge of being closed down. “We were not even the underdogs,” he told employees.
