A drive for risk-taking: Meet Marc Llistosella, new CEO & MD of Tata Motors

A compelling orator; a performance-oriented guy who would not settle for anything less than the best; a master strategist with a huge appetite for risk-taking. This is how Marc Llistosella’s colleagues who worked with him in Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) describe him. On Friday, Tata Motors announced Llistosella as the new CEO and MD of the company.
 
Llistosella, who is in his early fifties, succeeds Guenter Butschek, whose five-year term ends this month but has agreed to continue until June 30, 2021 when he will relocate to Germany.
 
Llistosella, a German like his predecessor, takes charge from July 1. This will be the first full-time assignment with an automobile firm since he quit as the President and CEO of Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (the Japanese truck and bus maker, owned by Daimler AG) in March 2018. He is currently on the board of a Swedish transport company named Einride, which specialises in electric vehicles.

 

With a long track record in greenfield projects, turnaround management and leading organisations, Llistosella brings to Tata Motors experience of running commercial vehicle businesses successfully including in India. “Llistosella doesn’t believe in a step-by-step, incremental approach to things. He is a big bang guy,” says V R V Sriprasad, former vice president – sales, marketing and services at DICV, who was part of Llistosella’s core team. “He is a no-nonsense performance person. There’s no room for sycophants in his system,” he adds. 
 
Tata Motors choice of a veteran in commercial vehicles for the top job reflects the company’s priorities, says Mahantesh Sabarad, head of research at SBICap Securities.  “After the subsidiarisation and a proposed joint venture partnership for the passenger vehicle business, the role of the company’s new MD will be largely confined to running the CV business—its cash cow, and take it to the next level.  That explains the choice of the new MD,” says Sabarad.

 
Last year, Tata Motors had started the process of hiving off its passenger vehicles (PV) business into a separate entity, and has called a meeting of the creditors and shareholders on March 5 to consider and approve the transfer of the PV business to TML Business Analytics Services, it said in a stock exchange notification earlier this month.  With the separation, the company is hoping both PV and CV businesses to “reach their full potential,” the company had explained. 
 
Although the maker of Signa and Prima range of trucks has managed to recoup losses in market share in the medium and heavy duty trucks in the recent past, Tata Motor’s challenge is to pull itself up in the light commercial vehicles market, Sabarad said. Its share in the LCV segment dropped to 36.42 per cent in the first nine months of the current fiscal from 39.52 a year ago, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).  “Tata Motors needs to bring revolutionary products such as an Ace (sub-one tonne truck) and a 407 (LCV) again,” he points out.

 
Tata Motors has so far remained focused on the domestic market and has been unable to expand itself beyond neighbouring countries. Llistosella is expected to globalise Tata Motors tap into markets beyond South Asia, which is critical for a cyclical business like CVs, said an industry expert.  “The company will also benefit from his passion for data analytics, electrification and renewable energies,” he said. 
 
Llistosella is no stranger to the Indian commercial vehicle market, having spent six years of his career in India. His most notable assignment in his decade-long career with Daimler Trucks Asia was his stint with DICV — a company for which he laid the foundation. After a failed attempt at a joint venture with Hero MotoCorp, he took the tough call of going solo in India’s competitive truck market, which had tradition­ally been the stronghold of Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland and had seen several failed attempts by multinational truck makers — including Navistar Inc, MAN Trucks — to establish themselves.

 
“A great believer in India’s potential as a market, Llistosella took the India project on his shoulders putting his career on the line,” an industry watcher said. He managed to convince the board not only to invest in India but also allow it to have an India-specific brand — attach a ‘Bharat’ to Benz. This was a first for the company.  A conservative company like Tata Motors will benefit from his risk-taking ability, he added.
 
Llistosella’s conviction paid off. Within five years of its launch in 2012 Bharat Benz, with its technologically superior products and value for money trucks, became a brand to reckon with among the transporters. It now corners 11 per cent in the medium and heavy duty truck market.

 
“Bharat Benz forced the rival brands to fall in line and compete on quality and technology instead of price,” says Sriprasad. “In a discount-driven market, Llistosella, who was MD and CEO of DICV from 2008 to 2014, stood his ground. This really helped the brand image,” said the industry watcher quoted above.
 
After a seven-year hiatus, he is back in India to head a domestic CV juggernaut. His innings at the Tata Group flagship, which has seen its fortunes turn around under Butschek’s leadership, will be watched with close interest by stakeholders. Besides firmly establishing the CV-maker on the path to profitability, Listosella will have to prepare the Mumbai headquartered company for a rocky road ahead.