Will new CEO Balaji turn saviour and guide Jaguar Land Rover out of its ‘Kali Yuga’?

In Hindu mythology, Lord Vishnu takes the form of Tirupati Balaji to appear in Kali Yuga to protect and save humanity. One could say Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been going through its own form of ‘Kali Yuga’, and the latest appointment of Tata Motors Group CFO P.B. Balaji might be the silver lining it needs.

Ever since JLR announced its identity revamp (which almost felt like a midlife crisis), it has been going through some “challenging quarters”. And days before its Q2 FY2026 results announcement on August 8 2025, the luxury car giant announced Balaji’s appointment, effective from November 2025.

It was only a few months ago that we saw the dismal first-quarter results of JLR. Retail sales for Q1 FY2026 slipped more than 15 per cent to 94,420 units. The planned winding down of legacy Jaguar models—which were once its identity—did not help matters. Additionally, US tariffs impacted volumes. It was a proper mix of bad luck, bad timing, and a possibly failed corporate identity reinvention.

The one sub-brand that did not go through significant changes, Land Rover, saw its Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender model mix take up more than 77 per cent of total wholesale volumes in the last quarter.

The wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors Limited (part of Tata Sons) has constantly reiterated itself as a British company at heart. And its reinvention—the ‘Reimagine’ strategy—was part of it, transforming its business to become carbon net zero across its supply chain, products, and operations by 2039.

“We have set a roadmap to reduce emissions across our own operations and value chains by 2030 through approved, science‑based targets. Electrification is central to this strategy, and before the end of the decade, our Range Rover, Discovery, and Defender collections will each have a pure electric model, while Jaguar will be entirely electric,” JLR said back in July.

But a mix of bad timing and bad luck (and bad tariffs) seemed to have closed in on the British automaker’s Achilles’ Heel, and its parent, Tata Motors, decided to bring in a titan to set things straight.

Enter Balaji, named after the saviour avatar of Lord Vishnu in Kali Yuga, who will have to pick up the pieces and drive JLR back to its better days of brand royalty. Balaji has been serving as the Group CFO of the Tata Motors Group since November 2017. He is an Indian automobile and consumer goods veteran with 32 years of experience under his belt.

According to JLR, Balaji “has successfully led large, diverse, global teams in multi‑cultural environments out of Mumbai, London, Singapore and Switzerland, and has been closely associated with the successful transformation at the Tata Motors Group.”

Balaji is an IITian, a mechanical engineer from IIT Chennai (one of the top engineering institutes in India). He followed it up with a PGDM from IIM Kolkata (one of the country’s premier management institutes). This makes Balaji a royalty in India’s domain knowledge pillar, if one had to go strictly by paper qualifications. But the transformation of Tata Motors and its resurgence as a consumer EV major in India under his CFO-ship are enough to prove Balaji’s mettle.

With India now in a free trade agreement with the UK, and with the phased erasure of mutual tariffs significantly helping the Tata Motors Group companies in their British-India supply chain, will Balaji turn saviour and flip JLR to better fortunes? This remains to be seen.

Business