In the past few months, companies like Tesla, Ola Electric, Mahindra, and TVS Motor have made strategic top-level recruitments in keeping with their business plans.
With corporates staying bullish on their electric vehicle (EV) plans, they have upped the ante with regard to top level hiring.
The last few months have seen companies such as Tesla, Ola Electric, Mahindra, TVS Motor make some strategic top level recruitments in keeping with their business plans,say experts.
As Tesla firms up its plans to roll out its first all-electric car in India this year, the Elon Musk-run company has hired top executives in the country which include Chithra Thomas as Head HR, Manuj Khurana as Policy and Business Development head and Nishant Prasad to head Tesla’s supercharging business.
Experts maintain that with the EV business at an inflexion point and poised to grow exponentially, companies in this space are getting more focus on the talent eco-system, which is technical and specialised in nature.
Ola Electric is stepping up its efforts to develop an electric car and last week appointed Wayne Burgess, a Jaguar veteran as Head of Vehicle Design, N Balachandar as the new CHRO and YS Kim as global head of sales and distribution. Ola Electric has already seen a 9X growth in hiring in the last 9 months, and it plans to quadruple the strength by the end of this year. It has accelerated hiring in areas such as AI, big data & analytics, app development & IoT.
Mahindra & Mahindra last month appointed Uli Stuhec as VP & head of Global Born Electric Platform post consolidating its EV business into two verticals viz. Last Mile Mobility (LMM) and Electric Vehicle Tech Centre. Mahindra recently appointed Pratap Bose, ex design head at Tata Motors who is expected to play a major role in the EV space.
EVs continue to witness an influx of innovation in technology and new business models will help in creating new jobs, say experts. Mahindra’s EV business is poised to increase its hiring by over 7-8% over the next 2-3 years across the two verticals. “Our focus is to design, develop and manufacture EVs in India and this will require scouting talent from multi-disciplinary fields. We are consistently working towards upskilling and hiring new talent which will help us develop world-class EV technology in India for the world”, said Rajeshwar Tripathi, CHRO at Mahindra.
While the electric major , Mahindra has seen a churn in manpower, it has also done several mid level placements in the recent past, say sources.
The push on EVs will lead to an increase in demand for sales and services support which in turn means a 12 -15% increase in employment generation across presales, sales and post-sales across the EV eco-system”, says a recent Teamlease Services report.
TVS Motor too is continually onboarding the best talent in India and abroad as we look to the future particularly in the area of EV and digital,” said a senior official of the company.
Tata Motors, buoyed by the success of its electric vehicle, Nexon is also set to get on to the EV hiring bandwagon. “Being a pioneer in the fast-growing EV space, we understand both its nuances as well as overlaps with ICE vehicles. Where needed, we have brought in external expertise via hiring and collaborations”, mentioned Ravindra Kumar G.P., CHRO, Tata Motors.
Homegrown ride-hailing company Ola is in the process of setting up a state of the art electric vehicles manufacturing plant in Chennai, to manufacture electric scooters. Although Ola uses 5,000 robots in its electric vehicle manufacturing plant, it is going to create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs for the local community.
Apart from the spike indirect employment at manufacturing facilities, the thrust is also creating an impact on the component space. The increase in the domestic production of batteries would mean a 15-18% increase in employment for skill sets including Product Design & Development. This would result in jobs for specific functions including Product designing of Battery packs in Lithium-ion, Product designs and drawings of various software, target Products Ready Cells to End product design like battery packs, say, experts.
