Shishir Mishra, the director and head of sales and marketing synergy at Stellantis India, has been moved to lead the Citroen brand in the country. Mishra’s appointment as the brand head is part of the company's plans to revamp the management structure and offer sharper focus to individual brands. Late last month, Stellantis India brought in Priyesh Kumar as the Jeep brand head.
Mishra is amongst the oldest employees for the Citroen brand in the country and came onboard in June 2018 as a director and head of partnerships. Before Citroen India, Mishra was associated with multiple non-banking financial corporations attached to the automotive companies like the Toyota Financial Services and Ford Credit for over a decade.
Stellantis India recently appointed Aditya Jairaj as its new CEO and MD, and has since appointed two new brand directors to steer the future growth endeavours. While Priyesh Kumar would seek to build the Jeep brand with the existing portfolio of the Compass, Meridian, Mishra does have a vehicle portfolio of the C3, C3 Aircross, which has had a sub-optimal performance so far.
Citroen’s India performance
Amongst the last entrants in the market, Citroen has struggled to cross the 1,000 units per month sales mark, despite playing in the mainstream Rs 8 lakh to Rs 20 lakh segment. Mishra who understands the workings of the group well having worked in delivering synergies across brands over the last few years will have to infuse fresh life in its portfolio.
Citroen India has taken a slew of measures to improve it's products lineup – right from launching the new automatic version of the C3 Aircross SUV to making six airbags mandatory to fulfill the demand for safer cars.
In fact, the company deferred the launch of its third vehicle, the C3X, as it wanted to equip the sedan with more features in order to better compete in the sedan space.
Hormazd Sorabjee
Anurag Chaturvedi
