Neerja Sharma, Chief Compliance Officer and Company Secretary at Hero MotoCorp has resigned from the company. According to a press statement issued today, Sharma will leave the organisation by the end of this month. It states that Sharma ‘has decided to take a pause and refresh her priorities’. According to the company, Sharma ‘made a significant contribution in her role, including many other areas of the Company’s business – in particular Corporate Governance and Diversity & Inclusion’. It is learnt that Dhiraj Kapoor, a colleague of Sharma, will be the interim Company Secretary till a permanent replacement is appointed. Kapoor will report to CFO, Niranjan Gupta.
Hero MotoCorp, the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters, has also announced the appointment of technocrat and industry veteran, Dr. Arun Jaura as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr. Jaura will report to Pawan Munjal, CMD, Hero MotoCorp. ETAuto broke the news first on Thursday.
In his new role, Jaura will be in charge of the OEM’s R&D and technology development hubs at Jaipur, and in Munich, Germany.
Dr. Jaura’s appointment comes at a crucial time as the company devises new strategies under its vision, ‘Be the Future of Mobility’. He takes over the responsibility of CTO from Vikram Kasbekar to lead the organisation’s R&D activities in India and Germany. Kasbekar, who has been leading the R&D function at Hero MotoCorp over the past two and a half years, will support Dr. Jaura ‘for a seamless transition and continue to work on some key assignments in the coming months’. Vikram Kasbekar, who has been leading the R&D function at Hero MotoCorp at a very crucial time over the past two and half years, will support Arun for a seamless transition and continue to work on some key assignments in the coming months. Kasbekar, who is also the company’s ED, had taken up the additional role after the exit of Markus Braunsperger, an ex-BMW executive, who donned the role of CTO in the Indian OEM for 5 years till October 2019.
Before joining Hero MotoCorp, Dr. Jaura was the Managing Director of Michelin India Technology Center since 2017, where he managed the R&D and the sustainability functions, and also represented the Michelin Pune site of more than 1100 engineers and technologists. He started his career with DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization) in 1982 where he spent a decade developing servo and electrohydraulic weapon systems as well as hydro-pneumatic suspension systems for battle tanks besides working on subsystems of the Combat aircraft.
Dr. Jaura had moved to Canada in 1992 to pursue a Ph.D. focused on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence for Smart manufacturing. In 1996, he joined Ford Motor Co in Dearborn, USA where he managed several Hybrid technology pilot programs. He also led and developed the world’s first ever Hydrogen-Hybrid vehicle working in partnership with the Department of Energy in the US.
In 2005, Dr. Jaura returned to India to join Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) as Senior Vice President – Product Development for Automotive Sector and subsequently as the CTO.
In his next assignment as Head of the Engineering Center for Eaton Corporation in Pune, he grew the capability and competency of the technical center while managing activities, and relationships with Eaton’s Industrial global business locations and eventually became Vice President (Technology). He has also had an entrepreneurial stint as well where he established Traktion, a mobility-focused consulting company in 2013.
Dr. Jaura is an M Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (1989-1991) and a Ph.D. from Concordia University (1992-1996), Montreal. He has been one of the founding members of the Government’s National Mission of Electric Mobility since January 2013. He has also been working with stakeholders in India’s Hydrogen journey.
