Skoda Auto has hired Rajesh Bhaseen as its new head of sales and Rahul Pansare as the new head of marketing, refilling the critical roles, which were vacant since the exits of Ajay Raghuvanshi and Tarun Jha from their respective roles in early 2023.

The same was communicated to dealers in the last few days. 

Bhaseen, who use to lead the North zone for Mahindra & Mahindra’s automotive division, takes over the national sales responsibility at Skoda Auto from Thursday, whereas Pansare joined Skoda Auto on May 29  – returning to the VW Group, having worked with the Jeep brand for almost 7 years and 3 months, as head of marketing and communication. Pansare had joined FCA Group (formerly) now Stellantis India to help establish the brand Jeep in the mainstream market.

Bhaseen has worked in sales, for Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors in their zonal and regional offices in the past.

An email sent to Skoda Auto seeking an official response on the appointments did not elicit any response at the time of publishing.

Both Bhaseen and Pansare will have a critical role to sustain the double-digit growth momentum at Skoda, which crossed 50,000 units of annual sales for the first time in 2023.

For the first four months of this calendar year, Skoda Auto has averaged sales of about 3,800 to 4,000 units. According to several people in the know, Skoda had earlier planned for an annual sale of about 75,000 to 80,000 units, which has been now brought down to 65,000 to 68,000 units, with dispatches of less than 20000 units, both Bhaseen and Pansare will have their work cut out to deliver at least 6000 units of monthly sales.

India is the third largest market for the Czech car maker and has become a critical base post exit from the Russian market. Petr Solc, the brand director for Skoda has set a target of growing in double digits amid moderating GDP and rising headwinds in the marketplace.

With its upcoming sub-4 metre SUV still another year and a half away, Skoda will have to rely on minor model changes to the Kushaq and Slavia and the imported kits and parts to ensure the excitement around the brand is maintained.

The new Enyaq Ev is part of the consideration, apart from bringing in the Octavia and Superb in completely built imports form, but they are likely to come only next year.