Tata Digital loses two more senior executives as leadership churn continues

While Podila has spent over two-and-a-half years at Tata Digital, Aksekar has spent close to three years at the company.

Tata Digital, the company that operates the Tata Neu super app, continues to see top level exits. Pavan Podila, Head of Architecture/Chief Software Architect, and Samir Aksekar, Chief Information Security Officer, are set to leave the company in the coming weeks, people in the know told Moneycontrol.

With this, Podila and Aksekar join a growing list of senior executives who have left the new-age internet unit of salt-to-software conglomerate. Rajiv Subramanian (Head of Travel), Gunjan Ghai (Chief Business Officer), Prateek Mehta (head of investments and neobanking), Sharath Bulusu (Chief Product Officer), and Shivcharan Pulugurtha (Chief Strategy and Business officer) have all quit Tata Digital in the past 12-18 months.

While Podila has spent over two-and-a-half years at Tata Digital, Aksekar has spent close to three years at the company. Podila, along with his team were building Tata Neu’s tech infra which served “as the digital backbone for companies like Croma, Big Basket, 1Mg, WestSide, CliQ, IHCL, Air India, Cult.fit, Starbucks JV, Titan, Tata Play” as per his LinkedIn profile.

Aksekar was in charge of developing the company’s information security layer. Both of them are leaving Tata Digital because of a misalignment with the top-level management, as per sources.

Their next move was not immediately known. “We do not offer comments on individual employees who decide to move on in pursuit of their personal ambitions, professional challenges or other reasons. We request you to abstain from giving any non-factual information to developments, which are normal in any growing organisation like Tata Digital,” a spokesperson for the company said in response to Moneycontrol’s queries.

"We are surprised and deeply concerned about the baseless colour and provocation being mentioned in the article. We categorically deny any such allegations and find them devoid of factual accuracy. We trust that our career decisions are reported in a professional manner and wish the entire team at Tata Digital the very best in the future," Podila and Aksekar said in a joint statement that was sent separately, while denying any misalignment with the top management.

The slew of departures comes at a time when the Mumbai-based company has been rejigging its business after Mukesh Bansal, co-founder of Myntra, who was roped in to oversee operations at Tata Digital, quit the company after a two year stint. Bansal became President of Tata Digital in June 2021 after the group invested $75 million in his fitness startup, CureFit.

During his tenure at the company, Bansal hired several top employees from Flipkart and Myntra to head different verticals at the company. While some like Subramanian, Mehta and Bulusu have quit after Bansal's departed, others like Gaurav Porwal (SVP – Service Commerce), Bhanu Pathak (CBO – Tata Neu), Aseem Sachdeva (SVP), continue to remain with the company.

Tata Group however remains upbeat on the vertical, which together competes with Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon India, Reliance’s JioMart and several others, is likely to pump in another $1 billion to improve its digital business, reported by Moneycontrol earlier. The injection is on top of the $2 billion that Tata Group has already invested in the venture last year.

Note: The story was updated to include Pavan Podila and Samir Aksekar's joint statement which was sent hours after publishing.