Ashish Dikshit appointed as MD of Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands
New Delhi: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd on Thursday said its Managing Director Ashish Dikshit has been appointed as Managing Director of demerged entity Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Ltd in addition to his current position. The board of directors of Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Ltd at its meeting held on Thursday has approved the appointment of Ashish Dikshit as Managing Director, in addition to his current position as Managing Director of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Further, the Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands board also approved the appointment of Vishak Kumar as Deputy Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, it added.
Their appointments are with effect from May 1, 2025, subject to the regulatory and other necessary approvals, the filing said.
Dikshit has over 30 years of experience in diverse roles across industries and functions. He started his career at Asian Paints before moving to Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, where he worked in its various functions, ranging from sales, brand management, supply chain and sourcing over 15 years, the filing said.
He was appointed President of its Lifestyle (MFL) Business in 2007 and went on to become its CEO in 2012. In February 2018, he took over as the Managing Director of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd.
He is an alumnus of IIT-Madras (Electrical Engineering), IIM-Bangalore (MBA) and Harvard Business School (Advanced Management Program). Read More Electric Pickup Trucks: Redefining Robust Rigs
Kumar was CEO of Madura Fashion & Lifestyle (MFL), a business unit of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd.
He joined the Madura business in 1995 as a management trainee. During his 30-year-long stint, he has worked across functions and occupied various roles in sales, marketing and retail, the filing said.
Prior to his stint as CEO of Madura, he was the CEO of Aditya Birla Retail Ltd, where he was instrumental in transforming the 'More' Supermarket and Hypermarket business, it added.
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I see four factors: first and foremost, the hugely appealing idea of a truly affordable EV. Tesla could well have made a small, cheap EV pickup a huge hit, given its existing assembly plants, lower-cost batteries, plus the chance to sell globally right out of the box. A '$25,000 EV' to catapult Tesla into the major leagues The excitement over an unexpected product from an unknown maker likely reflects intense market desire for truly affordable EVs. That was historically what Tesla intended to do, over time: grow its volume by producing higher numbers of less costly EVs via economies of scale. In 2024, Tesla delivered roughly 1.789 million cars globally—20,000 fewer than its 2023 total of 1.808 million. That makes the company larger than Mitsubishi (945,000) Subaru (976,000), and Mazda (1.170 million), but smaller than BMW (2.45 million) and BYD (4 million-plus). Tesla likely could have offered more range at the same price due to its in-house battery cell production. 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It is a few inches short of 19 feet long—more than 2 feet longer than a Model S—and weighs 6,600 pounds. That's just too large to use comfortably on many European and U.K. roads. Analysts express doubts over the stainless-steel truck's ability to comply with European Union pedestrian-protection impact and crush standards. As for China, Tesla said in December it had no plans to sell the truck there 'for now'. So the Cybertruck now appears limited to North America. For a much-touted new product that supposedly received 1 million or more reservations from across the globe, that can only be a missed opportunity. A Slate-alike compact or C-segment two-door pickup from Tesla, on the other hand, could be designed from scratch to sell in all three major markets — just like every Tesla model was before the Cybertruck. Small pickups are a known and accepted quantity there, and the news that Slate has a cargo-box accessory kit under development for use as a small van would put such a vehicle directly into competition with the European makers now launching electric compact vans. Except this one would have had the cachet Tesla enjoyed until quite recently. There are, of course, lots of reasons why a Slate-like vehicle might have been exactly the wrong thing for Tesla to launch instead of the Cybertruck. The first and most important is that, in the words of the old industry saying, 'Low price equals low profits.' After 2020, when the company became profitable for the first time, its margins on Model 3 and Model Y sales grew to impressive percentages. Even at high volumes, a lower-priced vehicle with a battery of 80 kWh is likely to have slim margins despite Tesla's low cell costs. The Cybertruck, sold in the volumes claimed, may not have posed that challenge. Second, any Tesla virtually has to have a central touchscreen and advanced telematics. It's part of the brand DNA. That clearly adds cost, as would a camera suite to let Tesla continue to aggregate visual data for its hopes of a self-driving future. There are, of course, lots of reasons why a Slate-like vehicle might have been exactly the wrong thing for Tesla. Third, again to the brand image, a small, cheap, square, very basic pickup is hardly what we would envision as a 'Tesla.' It would require expanding the concept of what a Tesla is—though so did the Cybertruck. Side note: a Slate-like pickup might not do well in China, where a small pickup is viewed as a commercial vehicle for low-wage laborers. Finally, a Slatelike truck–or any two-door vehicle–is an impractical vehicle to turn into a robotaxi, even assuming it were fitted with the appropriate camera and sensor suite. As long as five years ago, that was clearly the direction in which Musk was driving the company. As noted, I almost never deal in counterfactuals. I made an exception here, considering the road not taken, because it seems to me more in line with what the world expected of Tesla from 2012 to 2020. Not to mention a lot more aligned with The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan of 2006, specifically its third point: 'Use that money [from building affordable cars] to build an even more affordable car.'Still, affordable cars have to be desirable to make a difference; the Cybertruck is neither, as the market has shown. But a Slate-like Tesla small pickup could have been. Sic transit gloria mundi.
