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Maruti charges ahead with electric ambitions
NEW DELHI: The elephant in India’s automotive room is finally dancing. Maruti Suzuki, the lumbering giant that’s sold more cars to Indians than anyone else, has decided it’s time to go electric—and it’s doing so with the subtlety of a Hindi cinema production number.
On 2 December the company announced it had cosied up to 13 charging-point operators and aggregators, promising to transform India’s patchy EV infrastructure into something resembling a proper network. The ambition? Enable access to 100,000 public charging points by 2030. That’s a lot of juice.
For now, Maruti is rolling out 2,000 of its own charging stations across its dealer network, spanning more than 1,100 cities. Hisashi Takeuchi, the firm’s managing director and chief executive, called it a “historic step” into electric mobility. He’s not wrong—Maruti has been notoriously late to the EV party, watching rivals like Tata Motors gobble up market share whilst it dithered.
The company’s weapon of choice is the e Vitara, a made-in-India electric SUV that’s been tested from “sand to snow” across temperatures ranging from -30°C to 60°C. It promises a driving range of 543 kilometres on a full charge. Whether Indian roads will be quite so accommodating remains to be seen.
To prove the charging network isn’t vaporware, Maruti staged what it calls an “e drive”—four e Vitaras flagged off from Gurugram towards India’s four corners: Srinagar up north, Kanyakumari down south, Bhuj out west, and Dibrugarh in the east. It’s part publicity stunt, part stress test.
The centrepiece is an app called “e for me” (someone in marketing clearly had fun). It promises to locate charging points, handle payments through UPI or “Maruti Suzuki Money” (powered by Razorpay), and even let owners remotely manage their home chargers. One card does it all—”tap n charge” functionality that might actually work.
Senior executive officer for marketing and sales Partho Banerjee was positively buzzing. “Today is the dawn of a new era for electric mobility in India,” he declared. The company has trained 150,000 workers specifically for EVs and converted 1,500 service workshops across 1,100 cities to handle electric vehicles. In the top 100 cities, charging points will sit every 5-10 kilometres. DC fast chargers are being planted along major highways like motorway service stations.
Whether this charging offensive will be enough to convince India’s notoriously price-conscious buyers to go electric is the billion-rupee question. Maruti’s petrol-sipping hatchbacks have ruled Indian roads for decades precisely because they’re cheap to buy and run. EVs remain considerably pricier, even with government subsidies.
But Maruti clearly reckons the current is shifting. And when India’s car colossus finally plugs in, the entire market pays attention. Charge on.
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Tata Sons board set to approve Chandrasekaran’s third term as chairman: Reports
Chandrasekaran tipped for third term as Tata Group seeks steady hand at the helm
MUMBAI: The Tata Sons board is gearing up for a landmark meeting on February 24, with the spotlight on the re-appointment of N. Chandrasekaran as chairman. According to media reports, the board will consider several proposals, but the star item is Chandrasekaran’s potential third term, signalling continuity at the top of India’s most storied business group.
Chandrasekaran, popularly known as Chandra, has been at the helm of Tata Sons since January 2017. His current tenure concludes in February 2027, and the proposal on the table is for a five-year extension. The proposal comes from Noel Tata, chairman of Tata Trusts, and Venu Srinivasan, vice chairman of Tata Trusts, with board approval required to make it official.
Chandra’s journey with the Tata Group is a remarkable rise through the ranks. He started as an intern at Tata Consultancy Services, rose to chief operating officer in 2007, and became CEO in 2009 at the age of 46. He joined the Tata Sons board in 2016 and has been steering the group’s flagship companies ever since, holding chairmanships at Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Air India, Indian Hotels Company, and TCS itself.
A close aide of the late Ratan Tata, Chandrasekaran is widely seen as a steady hand capable of guiding the conglomerate through change while maintaining its long-standing ethos. Extending his term would reflect the Tata Trusts’ confidence in his strategic vision and the desire for stability at the group’s top echelons.
The board meeting on February 24 is expected to formalise the decision, marking another chapter in the Tata Group’s enduring story of leadership continuity and business ambition.
