Arvind Saxena
Director – Sales & Marketing, Hyundai Motor India
Arvind Saxena is one of those individuals, who have seen the Indian automobile industry being built brick by brick. With a rich experience of 25 years in the industry, Saxena, who is currently the Director of Sales & Marketing division at Hyundai Motor India, has been spearheading the company’s branding and sales efforts for the past five years. After he majored in mechanical engineering from the Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College, Allahabad, he got enrolled in the MBA degree course at Lucknow University. Saxena started his career with Escorts as a Management Trainee in the Sales & Marketing department. Realising his capabilities at an early stage, he was handed over control of Escorts’ auto business in Bihar after just a couple of months into his training at the company. Recalling those days, he says, “It was actually the best assignment that has ever been given to me.” After a successful stint of nine years at Escorts, he moved to Bajaj Auto as a Regional Marketing Manager for the company. He was put in charge of the company’s marketing operations in the Eastern and Northern region of the country. Saxena also has a long list of achievements to share, and they have all been result-driven performances. After a short stint at Bajaj, he joined Maruti Suzuki, where he worked for ten long years. He quickly rose up the hierarchy and was spearheading Maruti Suzuki’s all-India sales force (in the capacity of Chief General Manager – Sales) before he joined Hyundai in November 2005, where he was allocated the task to manage sales and marketing operations at the all-India level.
While at Maruti, he ensured that the company maintained its #1 spot in the Indian market. From there, he jumped ship to the #2 Hyundai, which was then and still is, chipping-away at the leader’s market share day in and day out. So how is Saxena taking this change of side? Is there a sudden antagonism towards all in the Maruti camp? Disagrees Saxena, “There is always a sense of competitiveness, but even today, I have close friends at Maruti. But when you are at the marketplace you are definitely competing with each other.” But one fact which he cannot deny is that a lot has changed for Hyundai since he joined the company. And it comes in the name of heightened competition. Though Hyundai continued to play the right cards by banking on the Indian small car segment (which has always attracted maximum volumes in the industry), competition has grown by the day. In recent years, players like GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan et al, have moved into the small car category to make the most of the opportunity at hand. But Saxena disagrees on this front as well. He boldly dismisses any worry, as he says, “The market has expanded well over the past few years, with many product launches happening in the small car segment. But Hyundai has also done very well. Five years back our market share stood at 17%, and despite competition rising, our market share today is close to 20%, which more or less describes how well we have been doing.” Numbers surely prove his point.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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