It's been a heady fortnight for Ravi Kant. On July 29, the then Executive Director (Commercial Vehicles), Tata Motors, received the coveted JRD Tata Quality Value Award, a quality performance award given out to Tata group companies, from Ratan Tata. A few hours later, Tata-whose VT-tat Falcon business jet was the second aircraft to land after the Mumbai airport reopened that day after being shut for two days due to unprecented rains-anointed Kant, 60, as the company's MD, Tata Motors' first in 11 years. When this writer bumped into Kant at the Delhi launch of a new Safari model, Dicor, Kant preferred not to talk about either the award or his surprise appointment, except to say that he looked forward to the job. "The development of the common-rail injection engine is a big thing and we have some bigger things in the pipeline," he said. It'll be interesting to watch Kant-and his former peer and head of passenger car business, V. Sumantran.

Home-coming, Sort Of

Eight years after he returned from the WTO (then GATT) Secretariat, Harsh Vardhana Singh, Secretary-cum-Principal Advisor, TRAI, is packing his bags for another stint, but this time as WTO's Deputy Director General. A Rhodes scholar and a University of Oxford-trained economist, Singh is only the third Indian to have bagged the post. With a WTO ministerial conference slated for December this year, Singh will be required to hit the ground running.

Instructive Job

Reliance industries' chairman Mukesh Ambani seems to be in a mood to learn. A couple of months after he brought IIT Bombay's Director Ashok Misra to the board, he's roped in another heavyweight from the world of academia: Dipak Jain, Dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Jain and Misra may not be able to teach the RIL Chairman any new lessons in management, but they may find an eager pupil in Ambani when it comes to corporate govenance.

Back To Bharti

Jai Menon's honeymoon with the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprise's (ADAE) Reliance Infocomm lasted all of one month. Poached from Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Tele-Ventures for a fantastic sum (rumours put the annual package at upwards of $1 million or Rs 4.4 crore), Menon was back at Bharti's Delhi headquarters by the end of July. What happened? "Anil is a great person. What caused this whole change was a family crisis that required me and my family to return to Delhi," says Menon, 41, who was group head for technology at ADAE. Back at Bharti, Menon will have an expanded focus on implementing technology for call centres, content, applications and other customer-centric interfaces. "I am making a much deeper commitment to India, especially Delhi," says the man, who not long ago was a top executive at Bell South in Atlanta. Like they say, Mumbai isn't everybody's cup of tea.

Moving Up

It may take a while yet, but Cadbury India's Bharat Puri is reported to be moving up to a larger role in Asia-Pacific, based out of Singapore. Puri, who came to the confectionery-maker from Asian Paints in 1998, made it to the top job at Cadbury in just four years. Puri couldn't be reached for a comment, and a company spokesperson declined to speak on the report, stating that Cadbury, as a policy, did not comment on management moves. Unlike other big FMCG companies, Cadbury has enjoyed steady growth. The only recent setback came in 2003, when worms were found in some Cadbury chocolates. While initially slow to realise the damage it could cause to the brand, Puri thereafter moved quickly, even effecting changes in packaging. The move worked. Most consumers had soon forgotten the worm attack and sales were back up. A disaster management skill that Puri will find handy in any market.

'Stock' Shock

Investors who greeted clothier Provogue's debut on the market with a huge premium (44 per cent) over the offer price, seem to be having a change of heart. The stock, which had soared to Rs 299 end of July, is down by a third. Part of the problem: On August 2, Mumbai police raided Provogue promoter Salil Chaturvedi's house and allegedly found three vials of cocaine, all following the June arrest of a former Provogue employee Vishal Meghnani for allegedly asking a colleague to ship cocaine to him in Chennai. When BT went to press, Chaturvedi, held in police custody, had filed a case against the Mumbai police for allegedly planting false evidence against him.

-Contributed by Kushan Mitra, KumarKaushalam and Krishna Gopalan