Exodus of top executives continues at Royal Enfield; Vimal Sumbly, head of APAC resigns

Sumbly, who was previously the India head of British motorcycle maker Triumph, had joined Royal Enfield three-four years ago. He was projected to take charge of the national sales operation from company veteran Shaji Koshy, who was set to retire then. Sumbly, however, was made the Asia-Pacific head.

In an internal statement, the company said Sumbly played a significant role in the growth story of the region as he implemented Royal Enfield’s vision for business growth, revenue expansion, customer and influencer relationship, dealer development, and brand building. He also set up a plant in Thailand to assemble motorcycles.

Since Sumbly took charge of the region, the business grew multi-fold with about 10,000 units sales and revenue of over Rs 250 crore from the region last year.

Responding to an email seeking comment on Sumbly’s resignation, a Royal Enfield spokesperson said: “As a policy, we cannot comment on this.”

In the past six months, chief executive Vinod Dasari, head of commercial organisation Lalit Malik, and global head of marketing Shubhranshu Singh have left the company. The other key exits in recent years were of Pankaj Sharma from the domestic sales team and Rodney Copes, a former Harley-Davidson executive who was in charge of North American operations.

The exits follow a flood of title upgrades at the company, with as many as 10 CXOs being created in design, brand, and project management among other functions.

There is a two-tiering of CXOs with design and brand fetching higher merit and reporting directly to managing director Siddhartha Lal, said people in the know. Others including the chiefs of finance, information, and HR report to executive director B Govindarajan.

The exits from the top tier are leading to executives from the mid-tier and other roles also leaving the company, said, company insiders.

Constant changes to top management and roles have also delayed product launches and impacted domestic volumes, which have been struggling to grow beyond 60,000 units in 2021, they said.

The company attributed a fall in sales to a sustained semiconductor shortage. But people in the know said there are also severe demand-related challenges, which were getting masked due to the supply-side issues.

When asked about weak sales of the all-new Classic, the spokesperson said there is healthy booking momentum for the brand and once supplies improve, the company will be able to deliver higher volumes.

Anuj Dua, the brand head for the Classic, Bullet and New Launches, will now take over the responsibility from Sumbly to lead the business in the APAC region.

Royal Enfield has also seen significant churn and restructuring of roles both at the management level and mid and lower management levels.

To be sure, “right-sizing” was a key part of its Project Restore initiative, kickstarted last year, which had aimed at pulling back the company to a 25% operating margin on sales of 50,000 units.

The programme led to the axing of 90-100 people across functions.