Ather Energy, the smart electric two-wheeler start-up, have announced the new addition of Dr.Venkatesh Padmanabhan as the Chief Operating Officer and Thiruppathy Srinivasan (Thiru) as Vice-President of Vehicle Development. Fondly known as Venki, he will head supply chain, quality, manufacturing, and service delivery at Ather.
Dr.Venkatesh Padmanabhan said
For my 10 years in India, I have been wrestling with this singular question : Can we, will we create world beating consumer hardware products and brands from scratch? We are great in value engineering, local sourcing manufacturing and even at detail engineering of designs of others. But what about solving hairy consumer problems with our own design, and our own brand? When I met Tarun, Swapnil and their team at Ather, it was like a lightning bolt hit me. They surely have great brand, design and engineering mojo and are in early stages of building detail engineering and manufacturing capability. I thought I had value to add to this exciting quest and I signed up.
Thiruppathy Srinivasan (Thiru) said
Having worked around the world and in India, I am convinced of the great capability here to engineer innovative product concepts. Especially our young engineers with guidance from seniors from industry and academia have been developing exceptional product concepts, as seen with many IIT Madras incubated companies recently. Ather Energy is among the best of them and have assembled a great team producing a product design with no compromises.
Guiding the team in taking the design through development, along with supplier partners, into production and successfully into the market is an opportunity I am truly delighted to take up. In the past few months I have been with them, I have enjoyed the great level of openness, diligence, enthusiasm, and high sense of purpose of the team.
Tarun Mehta, CEO, Ather Energy said
Venki’s career has taken him to multiple countries and multiple automotive companies. He has a strong knowledge base of the operational requirements for an automotive company, specially two wheelers. His network and his experience in the industry is a valuable asset for a young company. Ather is a young company, building on a new platform with a nascent to often non-existent vendor ecosystem. Venki’s exposure to vendors and manufacturing processes in India will prove a strategic advantage as we close in on the production of the S340.
Thiru joins Ather with over 25 years of experience in product organisations and with a number of product launches under his belt. His knowledge of new product development and introduction will be a tremendous advantage for a startup like Ather. His exposure to the product vendor ecosystems in India, China as well as in countries like Singapore and the United States, gives us a strategic advantage in the prototyping cycle of the S340 and in our future products.
After 15 years at General Motors, in 2004 Dr. Padmanabhan joined Daimler Chrysler’s (DCX) Chrysler Division to support the integration of Lean Manufacturing in its diverse operations and later also worked at Mercedes Car Division. He was brought to India in 2007 as Managing Director of Chrysler’s first South East Asia Global Sourcing Centre in Chennai from where the company today sources close to USD 1 Billion every year in automotive parts.
About Dr.Venkatesh Padmanabhan
He joined Royal Enfield as Chief Operating Officer in 2008 and rose to the position of Chief Executive Officer in 2011. During this period, with two successful launches of the Classic and Thunderbird single cylinder UCE based motorcycles, the company saw a threefold increase in sales and twenty fold increase in profits. Royal Enfield now is a brand reborn and thriving in India and 45 other countries.
In 2013, Dr. Padmanabhan served as the MD & CEO of EICL [English Indian Clays Limited] to help recast a 75 year old $80M Kaolin Clay and Starch Producer into a modern innovation driven specialty chemicals company. He moved to Cyient in October 2015 to integrate its acquisition of Rangsons Electronics into extending the detail engineering offerings of its aerospace, defense, rail, medical and consumer business units into complete life cycle offerings.
About Thiruppathy Srinivasan
Thiru also serves as a Senior Advisor of Industry Relations at the Center for Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research, IIT Madras. In this role he advises Industry and IITM faculty on Technology and Capability development in Manufacturing towards global leadership.
Thiru started his career in 3M after completing his Masters in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University, USA. Eventually, he moved to Iomega (now Lenovo) supporting their worldwide design centers and factories in sourcing components from Asia. In 2002, he joined Rexnord as its Director of Global Quality in the Bearing Products Division.
He moved back to India in 2003 to serve as the Director of Sourcing for Tyco Healthcare (now Medtronic) managing their Bangalore and Shanghai offices. After a stint at IMI International, he joined AO Smith as Director of Operations, India in 2008. Thiru played a key role in establishing their Green Field Manufacturing Operations in Bangalore. In 2012, he joined Ariv Technologies as their Managing Director and currently serves on their Board of Directors.
About Ather Energy
Ather Energy Pvt. Ltd. is an automobile design and manufacturing company founded in the year 2013 by IIT Madras graduates – Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. Ather is committed to building smart, connected, uncompromising vehicles and seeks to re-imagine urban commute with the help of technology. The company has so far received funding from Hero MotoCorp, Tiger Global and Flipkart founders Sachin & Binny Bansal. The team of about 200+ employees is currently developing an electric two-wheeler, which will be completely designed and made In India. Ather is also setting up a charging network with its own smart charging pods. These fast charging pods will be set up initially across its three market cities – Bangalore, Chennai & Pune. For more information, please visit Ather Energy