Tata Sons announces organisational changes; S Padmanabhan, Mukund Rajan, Harish Bhat take charge

Over a week after Cyrus Mistry was ousted as Chairman, Tata Sons today announced some organisational changes, bringing in S Padmanabhan as the group human resources head.

Besides this, the former Tata brand custodian under Mistry's regime, Mukund Rajan, has been given the responsibility of overseeing operations of the overseas representative offices of Tata Sons in the US, Singapore, Dubai and China. This is in addition to his existing responsibility of ethics and sustainability.

Harish Bhat, who is responsible for marketing and customer centricity, will henceforth also be responsible for managing the Tata Brand, Tata Sons said in a statement.

In the interim, he will oversee the functions of Strategy and Business Development, it added.

Padmanabhan has been given the responsibility of Group Human Resources in addition to his existing role of leading the Tata Business Excellence Group.

Tata Sons further said that Gopichand Katragadda will continue to be the Group Chief Technology Officer, while Sanjay Singh will oversee the Public Affairs function out of the Delhi office. Three members of the now-disbanded Group Executive Council set up by Mistry -- Nirmalya Kumar, N S Rajan and Madhu Kannan -- have already quit. They have decided to explore options outside Tata Sons and have left the company, the statement added.

On October 24, the Tata Sons board had replaced Mistry as Chairman and appointed Ratan Tata as interim Chairman. The company had said it would find a new Chairman in four months.

Also read : Tata Sons removes Cyrus Mistry as chairman, Ratan Tata takes over as interim chief

Since then, a war of words between the Tatas and Mistry has spilled into the open, with the latter alleging that he was pushed into a position of a "lame duck" chairman, and that changes in the decision making process created alternate power centres in the Tata Group. Tata retorted by saying that Mistry's removal was "absolutely necessary" for the future success of the Tata Group, and insisted that the decision was a well-considered and serious one for its board members.

Disclaimer: Ratan Tata is an investor in YourStory)