Indian-born Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s COO, will leave the company by the end of this month. In a short press release, Gupta is mentioned as one of the fathers of Nissan’s recent resurgence but also that he leaves “to pursue other challenges or opportunities”.

Ashwani Gupta (52) arrived in the highest ranks of the Nissan management in December 2019, when he became COO and a triumvirate member that had to save Nissan after the Ghosn debacle and the bad financial results. Ghosn’s CEO successor was Makoto Ushida; the third person and deputy COO was Jun Seki.

Seki left soon, leaving the rescue operation of Nissan to Ushida and Gupta. The latter distinguished himself with his knowledge of the car industry and his effortless handling of the shareholders, the press, and the public. His aim was clearly to succeed Ushida sooner or later, but he profiled himself also as a very cool lover of the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

Being still heavily traumatized by the ‘Ghosn affair’, the Nissan group has retracted itself more into its Japanese headquarters in Yokohama. As Gupta became more influential and powerful within the company, some forces preferred him to leave, not the least partner Renault.

Untenable

According to the Financial Times, the relationship between Nissan’s number one and two was untenable. Ushida and other high-ranking Nissan managers did everything to make Gupta leave. In his three years at the helm of the Nissan group, Gupta has contributed significantly to the revival of Nissan, which has been out of the red again since the 2021/2022 fiscal year.

“It’s tough to lead a Japanese company coming from outside,” says Tatsuo Yoshida, an automotive analyst at Bloomberg. “The cultural differences, the language barrier, and the traditional hierarchy within a Japanese company can cause big problems for foreign managers,” he adds.

Gupta’s successor will be announced on the 27th of June, the day of Nissan’s General Assembly meeting in 2023.

Optimistic about the future

After what happened, it won’t be easy to give the impression of stable and balanced leadership at the Nissan top. Still, the management is confident and optimistic about the group’s future.

The forecast is that the net benefit will increase by 42% in 2023/2024, and the operating benefit will climb by 38%. Turnover has to increase by 17%, while sales have already increased by more than a quarter lately.

Nissan expects these sales to grow further by 21%, in sharp contrast with the 14,7% decline last year (2022/2023 fiscal year). Recently, Ashwani Gupta admitted that the Nissan management had failed to foresee the booming electric sales in China, one of its more important markets.