Ajay Bajaj quits LG

NEW DELHI: It’s yet another season of manpower movement at consumer durable maker LG Electronics India. The head of its airconditioners business, Ajay Bajaj has quit to join Videocon as the chief of its AC division.

And that’s not all, the company is now close to making its biggest lateral entry by inducting a chief marketing officer (CMO) and has shortlisted two Indian expat candidates one of whom is believed to be a Unilever executive. One of the old hands at LG Electronics India, Mr Bajaj has been the business group head for airconditioners.

As of now there is no decision whether there would be a replacement for him or the division would continue to be led by two separate product heads who handle residential and commercial airconditioners respectively, as it used to be in the past. At Videocon, he has replaced Nipun Gupta who has now been given another portfolio within the group.

At LG Electronics, the marketing portfolio is divided between Sandeep Tiwari and Rajeev Jain. Mr Tiwari as the head (marketing) looks after communications which basically deals with advertising and Mr Jain is the head of product planning. The incoming CMO would be the overall head of marketing.

LG Electronics’ director(HR & management support) YV Verma, said, “At the corporate level we are trying to put a more aspirational feel to the brand and have decided to get a CMO to lead marketing.” We have shortlisted a few candidates with global experience who are working with international well known brands.”

LG has been trying different structures for its marketing wing over the last few years. The CMO would in effect be a replacement for Girish Bapat who was roped in from automaker M&M in August’2005 as vice president(marketing). However, soon after he joined the marketing and sales wings were restructured.

In March’06, the two functions were merged and then divided between the existing sales head Girish Rao and Mr Bapat on a geographical basis. Mr Bapat who was made the vice president(sales & marketing) for south and west had quit within a year of joining LG.

Thereafter, Mr Rao was made the national vice president(sales & marketing). He has a supportive role for marketing which itself was split into two on the basis of product groups. After a few months, the marketing division was overhauled again on the basis of marketing functions which exists till date.

LG has been largely banking on internal executive movement strategy for senior management positions and the new expat CMO would be one of the rare lateral appointments till date. In the past LG had hired Girish Rao from BPL as VP(sales) and Girish Bapat from M&M as VP(marketing).

According to sources, the idea of having a senior marketing head in place of splitting the role among two mid-tier executives is being championed by the new country head MB Shin, who took over in January this year.