Saurabh Agrawal, Bhaskar Bhat enter Tata Sons board

Holding company board has four group executives, seven outsiders

Tata Sons has said that it has elevated its group chief financial officer, Saurabh Agrawal, and Titan Company’s managing director Bhaskar Bhat to its board of directors.

The announcement comes a couple of months after group veteran Ishaat Hussain retired from the board of Tata Sons and other group companies in early September on turning 70. Hussain was also finance director of Tata Sons and it was expected that Agrawal would join the board following Hussain’s retirement. 

“The board will benefit from the tremendous experience and knowledge of these professionals in multiple domains,” said N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons.

Saurabh Agrawal

Agrawal joined Tata Sons in July 2017 and was a key appointment made by Chandrasekaran, who took over the reins of Tata Sons in February. Since then, the new chairman has made several appointments, including Roopa Purushothaman as chief economist, Banmali Agrawala as president, infrastructure, defence and aerospace, and Aarthi Subramanian as chief digital officer. 

 Bhaskar Bhat has been a top performer in the Tata group, having spearheaded Titan’s journey from a watchmaker to a wider basket of products such as jewellery and eyewear, and making it the third most valued company in the group. Bhat is credited with helping Titan achieve a market capitalisation of over $10 billion. On Friday, Titan was valued at Rs 69,819 core, ahead of Tata Steel’s Rs 68,116 crore.  

Bhaskar Bhat

“Bringing top performing executives on the holding company’s board will help the Tata group accelerate its value creation drive,” said the head of a global management consultancy firm who has advised the group for several decades. 

Chandrasekaran became chairman of the group's holding company, moving from the group’s most valued company Tata Consultancy Services as its managing director and CEO. TCS had a market capitalisation of Rs 5,18,791 crore on Friday. 

He was appointed director on the Tata Sons board in October, along with Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). JLR is a part of Tata Motors, which is the second most valued company of the group with a market capitalisation of Rs 1,21,687 crore on Friday.

   

With this, the Tata Sons board now has 11 members. Seven of them are from outside the group, including Vijay Singh, Nitin Nohria, Ronen Sen, Farida Khambata, Venu Srinivasan, Ajay Piramal and Amit Chandra.