Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta to step down on June 27

Nissan Motor Co announced that Ashwani Gupta, representative executive officer and COO, “has elected to leave the company effective June 27.” Gupta will also retire from the board of directors on the same day.

1. Ashwani Gupta will also resign from the board of directors
2. Nissan Duster to launch in India by 2024

Gupta, who's been serving as the COO since December 2019, has been instrumental in the development and execution of the Nissan NEXT transformation plan, which focused on establishing the foundation of Nissan’s business towards growth. He has also taken key leadership positions and been a driving force in various Renault-Nissan Alliance projects over several years resulting in many achievements.

Gupta's journey in Renault-Nissan

Born in Dehradun, Gupta started his career in 1992 in engineering and purchasing in the private sector and later moved to management positions with Honda India and Japan in 1996.

He joined Renault in 2006 as general manager of purchasing in Mumbai, before moving to the Renault Nissan Purchasing Organisation in France as global supplier account manager for braking systems in 2008. Later, he joined Renault Nissan BV in 2009 as deputy general manager, global purchasing.

In 2011, Gupta was appointed global program director for Datsun vehicles at Nissan Motor Co in Japan, where he led the product development to launch in India, Russia, Indonesia and South Africa. He has been vice president of Renault’s Light Commercial Vehicle Division since 2014, where he oversees the automaker’s worldwide LCV business.

On April 1, 2017, Gupta was named Alliance senior vice president of the Renault-Nissan LCV Business, and then Alliance senior vice president of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi LCV Business in 2018. Nissan plans to announce the new executive line-up on June 27.

Future Nissan models launching in India

Renualt-Nissan recently rejigged their global equity structure and announced that they would launch six new locally produced models, with the first one arriving by 2025. The six models would essentially comprise three new vehicles, each having a sister product in the other partner brand. There's also news of the Renault Duster making a comeback in India.