Ather Energy, India’s leading electric scooter manufacturer, today announced the appointment of two key leaders on the manufacturing and supply chain side as the company embarks on its next phase of growth. The company has appointed Sanjeev Kumar Singh as the Senior Vice President (SVP) – Manufacturing and Harendra Saksena as the Chief Procurement Officer (CPO). The strategic appointments come as Ather Energy looks to transform its fast growing manufacturing and supply chain as part of its industrial strategy.
Sanjeev Singh, who 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 December 2021, Ather announced its second facility at Hosur that will take its capacity to 400,000 units from the existing 120,000.
Harendra Saksena comes in with 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.
Commenting on the appointment, 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 in better quality, operational efficiency to Ather’s manufacturing and supply chain operations”
Sanjeev joins Ather Energy from Bosch Ltd having 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 Labour Model transformation, driving and inculcating lean manufacturing culture, creating and nurturing high performance teams and creating a sustainable problem solving culture.
Harendra joins Ather Energy from Johnson Electric Hong Kong, where he spent the last 20 years assuming various responsibilities across procurement, commodity strategy, supplier quality & development, compliance, industrialization, 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.
Ather Energy recently 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. Ather Energy has been on a rapid expansion spree for its retail sales network across the country as well as its manufacturing operations. The company 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.
