Tata Digital unveils leaner A-team under new CEO Naveen Tahilyani

The new streamlined structure makes the firm more nimble and business focused

After weeks of organisational shakeup, Tata Digital’s new chief executive Naveen Tahilyani has come up with a revamped executive team for the Neu super app.

Tahilyani announced his A team in an internal mail to employees. The focus of the rejig has been to streamline the structure of the leadership and make the firm nimble and business focused.

This is evident from the fact that the total number of leaders reporting directly to Tahilyani are 20 now, down from 35 who reported to the former CEO Pratik Pal.

The email also urges the leadership team and employees to focus on the firm’s loyalty programme and use of its financial services to enhance customer stickiness.

According to the email, this structure comes into effect starting May 20, 2024.

“We have constructed a structure for the executive team which is built on principles of giving our leaders meaningful opportunity for impact, creating accountability along with empowerment, driving simplicity and clarity and most importantly encouraging collaboration and working together within Tata Digital and with our other subsidiaries/group companies,” wrote Tahilyani in his email.

The rejig promotes internal talent and also gives more business roles to these executives than just functional roles.

For instance, Anand Ramadurai has been given the role of chief business officer, Flights. He was earlier the head of loyalty programme at Tata Digital. Similarly, Aseem Sachdeva, while continuing to head the business finance function for commerce, will also now be the chief business officer, Electronics.

There are new people in leadership roles, such as Gaurav Motani. He was earlier part of the product team and has now been made chief product officer.

With a streamlined structure, Tahilyani also wants the leaders to work on the firm’s loyalty programme and focus on improving customer stickiness.

The aim is to win over customers.

“We will have to work on a few aspects to win the hearts and mind of our customers --fine tune the loyalty programme, invest in and leverage data for offers, find a better way to convey our proposition to the customers, improve customer experience while creating new value propositions, and use financial services smartly to enhance customers stickiness. We will have to be razor sharp about our priorities and execute our strategic initiatives with rigour and discipline,” he wrote.

Tahilyani also wrote his priority is now to work with the leaders to form their own teams.

“Over the next few days I will work closely with each of the leaders to announce their team structures. Towards the end of the month, during our upcoming Neu Huddle, I will discuss some details of the way forward and seek your feedback,” he said.

The rejig is part of the broad contours of the firm’s strategy and will get tweaked as time goes.

“The more I understand the nature of the opportunity ahead of us the more I am awestruck by the size of the potential impact we can have. With a vast set of loyal customers across the group, the best corporate brand in the country, a terrific platform which offers great products and services, a galaxy of market-beating brands and group companies, and a wonderfully talented team, what we can achieve is virtually limitless,” he said.

New executive team reporting to CEO:

• Abhimanyu Lal- chief marketing officer
• Amreesh Kher- CBP (Insurance)
• Anand Ramadurai- CBO (Flights)
• Aseem Sachdeva- CBO (Electronics). He will also head the business finance function for commerce for which he will report to Hardeep.
• Gaurav Hazrati- CBO (credit card, lending, payments and investment). He will also continue to anchor financial services strategy.
• Gaurav Motani- Chief product officer
• Hardeep Singh Guru- CFO
• Janaki Naik- chief human officer and head of admin
• Nagarajan Karuppiah- head of AI COE
• Neeraj Lal- head of risk and compliance
• Nikhil Asopa- head of CS & commerce operations
• Pavan Baragal- head of supply chain, COE
• Poornima Sampath- General Counsel
• Sheshadri Narasimhan- CBO (Grocery, health, fashion and growth initiatives). He will also anchor strategy function for Tata Digital
• Sheran Mehra- CBO (Hotels) and brand advisor. Sheran will also work closely with me on brand marketing, corporate communication and public relations.
• Siddhartha Kargupta- chief data officer
• Smitesh Valanju- chief information officer security officer
• Sudeep Nayak- Head of engineering (FS)
• Sudhakar S- Company Secretary
• Sunandan Das- chief delivery and information officer