Ather Energy, a leading electric scooter manufacturer in India has announced the appointment of two key leaders to its team to strengthen the manufacturing and supply chain side of the company.
The EV maker has appointed Sanjeev Kumar Singh as the Senior Vice President (SVP) – Manufacturing and Harendra Saksena as the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), which it says will help transform its fast-growing manufacturing and supply chain as part of its industrial strategy.
Tarun Mehta, CEO & Co-founder, Ather Energy said “Over the last couple of years, Ather has seen phenomenal growth and we are scaling up our manufacturing and supply chains to meet the growing demand. Towards this, we have Harendra Saksena joining us as the CPO and Sanjeev Singh joining us as the SVP – Manufacturing. Both Sanjeev and Harendra will be playing a crucial role in strengthening and transforming the end-to-end supply chain, purchase & procurement, manufacturing, and our overall industrial strategy for Ather. Their experience and expertise will bring better quality, and operational efficiency to Ather’s manufacturing and supply chain operations”
Singh joins Ather with 18 years of extensive expertise, will lead the manufacturing vertical and oversee all current and future production facilities. He will be crucial in scaling up Ather’s manufacturing to 400,000 units and beyond from the existing capacity of 120,000 units.
In his previous role at Bosch, he led various functions leading large teams, handling continuous and discrete manufacturing, relocation of products and processes from Europe, and successful new product SOPs. He has also played crucial roles in leading various transformation initiatives including the Labour Model transformation, driving and inculcating lean manufacturing culture, creating and nurturing high-performance teams, and creating a sustainable problem-solving culture.
Saksena has a rich experience of over 20 years and will be responsible to strengthen and lead Ather Energy’s supplier management function. With his diverse and extensive background in managing various supplier environments, his appointment will be crucial to building strong supplier relationships. He joins Ather Energy from Johnson Electric Hong Kong, where he held various responsibilities across procurement, commodity strategy, supplier quality & development, compliance, industrialisation, people and product development, indirect procurement, and material planning. He has played crucial roles in establishing strategic partnerships with automotive semiconductor leaders from Europe and steel and plastic global suppliers from Japan, Europe, and China.
Recently, Ather Energy raised $128 million (Rs 991 crore) in a funding round led by National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and Hero MotoCorp where a significant part of this will go into capacity building. The EV maker has expanded its retail footprint to 35 cities with 41 retail stores and plans to expand to 150 experience centres in 100 cities by 2023.
