In a widely anticipated move, the Tata Group on Friday rejigged the structure of the top management of newly acquired Air India and moved some top executives who were board members to senior management positions.
Director-finance Vinod Hejmadi, director-commercial Meenakshi Malik, director-personnel Amrita Sharan director-operations RS Sandhu will step down from the Air India board. Hejmadi is re-appointed chief financial officer, Sandhu will be chief of operations, Malik and Sharan will be advisor to the CEO, according to a company order.
As the Tata Group is yet to appoint the CEO of Air India, Malik and Sharan will currently be advisors to Air India Chairman N Chandrasekaran, it said.
Among other major changes at the airline, Nipun Aggarwal has been appointed as Chief Commercial Officer and Suresh Dutt Tripathi as Chief Human Resources Officer.
The order was issued by Chadrasekaran, who is also the chairman of Tata Sons.
Satya Ramaswamy, who has worked at Tata Consultancy Services before, was appointed as Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India, the order said. Rajesh Dogra was appointed as the Head of Customer Experience and Ground Handling at the airline.
Air India veteran Sandhu will continue to hold the charge of Chief of Operations, it noted. Another Air India veteran Hejmadi will continue to hold the charge as Chief Financial Officer, it mentioned.
“The new appointees will exercise the powers of functional/departmental heads as per the delegation of authority. We wish them all the very best in their new role,” Chandrasekaran stated in the order.
After a competitive bidding process, the government had on October 8 last year sold Air India to Talace Private Limited — a subsidiary of the Tata group’s holding company — for Rs 18,000 crore.
