About Us

Natarajan Chandrasekaran (Chandra) is the Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company and promoter of all Tata Group companies.

Chandra joined the Board of Tata Sons in October 2016 and was appointed Chairman in January 2017. He also chairs the boards of several group operating companies, including Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Air India, Tata Chemicals, Tata Consumer Products, Indian Hotel Company and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – of which he was the Chief Executive Officer from 2009-17.

His appointment as Chairman of Tata Sons, followed a 30-year business career at TCS, which he joined from university. Chandra rose through the ranks at TCS to become the CEO and Managing Director of the leading global IT solution and consulting firm. Under his leadership, TCS generated total revenues of US $16.5 billion in 2015-16 and consolidated its position as the largest private sector employer in India and the country’s most valuable company.

Since he has taken over as Chairman, Chandra has been driving transformation of the group towards digital, sustainability and supply chain resilience. The group has forayed into new businesses including electronics manufacturing, consumer internet platform and mobile technology for 5G in India. The Tata group has expanded its aviation presence with the acquisition of Air India and is building a large global airline. The group’s turnover stood at over US$125 billion with a market cap of US$311 billion as on 31 March 2022.

In addition to his professional career at Tata, Chandra is on the International Advisory Council of Singapore’s Economic Development Board. He is the Chairman of Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow as well as the President of the Court at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He is the member of Bocconi's International Advisory Council and the Co-Chair of the India US CEO Forum. He is also on the Board of Governors of New York Academy of Sciences and has been elected as an international member of the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Chandra was conferred with the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in India, in the field of trade and industry in 2022. Chandra has been awarded several honorary doctorates by leading Universities in India and internationally, including an honorary Doctor of Letters from Macquarie University, Australia, Doctor Honoris Causa by Nyenrode University, The Netherlands, honorary Doctor of Science by the Aligarh Muslim University, and Doctor of Letters from the Regional Engineering College, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, where he completed a Masters Degree in Computer Applications, before joining TCS in 1987.

Chandra is also the author of Bridgital Nation, a groundbreaking book on harnessing technological disruptions to bring Indians closer to their dreams.

Chandra is an avid photographer, and a passionate long-distance marathon runner. He is a Six Star Finisher of the World Marathon Majors and continues to champion fitness.

Born in 1963, Chandra lives in Mumbai, with his wife Lalitha. 

Based in New Delhi, Mr. Wilson joined Air India in mid-2022 after 26 years with Singapore Airlines (SIA) working in various senior roles for both the flagship airline as well as Scoot, its wholly owned low-cost subsidiary of which he was the founding CEO. 

As CEO and MD, Mr. Wilson is leading Vihaan.ai, Air India’s comprehensive five-year program to transform the formerly state-owned carrier, now part of the Tata Group. into a world-class global airline with an Indian heart

Air India’s transformation has already seen the airline place the largest single order for new aircraft in aviation history, comprising 470 wide- and narrow-body aircraft. It also entails a complete overhaul of equipment, product, technology, systems and culture, and dramatic network expansion.

In addition to transformation of the flagship airline, Mr. Wilson is steering the integration of subsidiary airlines Air India Express and Air Asia India into a single low-cost carrier, and, subject to regulatory approval, the merger of Air India with Vistara, a full service airline co-owned by Tata and Singapore Airlines.

To support the Group’s growth, Air India is also in the process of building a world-class Training Academy to provide pilots, cabin crew, engineers and a skilled workforce that will also support the Indian aviation ecosystem.

Mr. Wilson (born July 1971 in Christchurch, New Zealand) began his career with SIA in New Zealand in 1996 after obtaining a Master of Commerce with 1st Class Honours in Business Administration from the University of Canterbury. He worked for SIA in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to Singapore in 2011 as the founding CEO of Scoot until 2016. He then served on SIA’s Management Committee as Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, before returning for a second stint as the CEO of Scoot in 2020.

Mr. Wilson is married with no children.

Mr. Sanjiv Mehta joined the Board as Non-Executive Independent Director from 9 March 2022.

Mr Sanjiv Mehta (62) is the Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), India's largest 'fast-moving consumer goods' (FMCG) Company. As President, he heads Unilever's business in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka & Nepal). He is a member of the 'Unilever Leadership Executive', and the President Commissioner (Non-Executive Chairman) of Unilever Indonesia. During his nine years at the helm of Hindustan Unilever Limited, the Company's market capitalisation has increased from $17 billion to $75 billion, making HUL one of the most valuable companies in the country.

Mr. Sanjiv Mehta is the Past President of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) during 2021-22, Director on the Indian School of Business Board, member of the Breach Candy Hospital Trust, and South Asia Advisory Board of Harvard Business School. He chairs Xynteo Vikaasa, a top Indian and MNC companies’ coalition.

Mr. Sanjiv Mehta was conferred the honorary degree of ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Business Management by Xavier University (Xavier Institute of Management). He has received several personal recognitions, including the ‘Best CEO Multinational’ by Forbes, the ‘Management Man of the Year’ by Bombay Management Association, the ‘CA Business Leader’ by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, the ‘Best Transformational Leader’ by the Asian Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability, the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ by The Economic Times, ‘JRD Tata Corporate Leadership award’ by the All India Management Association, etc.

Mr. Mehta graduated in Commerce and is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He has also completed Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School.

Mrs. Alice G. Vaidyan joined the Board as Non-Executive Independent Director from 9 March 2022.

Mrs. Alice Vaidyan, former Chairman and Managing Director of General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC) and the First Lady CMD in the Indian Insurance industry has over 40 years of experience and is considered among the foremost experts in the insurance and reinsurance industry in India and across the globe. She has won several national and international awards.

Mrs. Alice Vaidyan was the only Indian in Fortune’s Global list (2018) of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. In April 2019, Mrs. Vaidyan was honoured with the Freedom of City of London in recognition of her work to promote insurance ties between India and London. She won the ET Prime Woman CEO of the Year award in 2019. Business Today recognised her as one of the 30 most powerful women in Indian business successively in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Fortune India announced her as the 4^th most powerful woman in Business in 2018 and in 2019. ASSOCHAM honoured her with the Leadership Excellence Award in February 2019.

Mrs. Alice G. Vaidyan has done Master of Arts (English Literature). She is a fellow member of the Insurance Institute of India and has completed Leadership Strategy Program from Harvard Business School.

Mr. P.R. Ramesh joined the Board as Non-Executive Independent Director from 28 July 2022.

Mr. Ramesh was the Chairman of Deloitte India and has over 40 years of experience. He also served as a member of Deloitte Global Board and Deloitte Asia Pacific Board. He has served clients in manufacturing, banking and financial services, technology, media, telecommunications, energy and resources and consumer business sectors throughout his professional career.

Mr. Ramesh has been associated with various Regulatory bodies such as SEBI Committee on Disclosures and Accounting Standards, Committee for Reforming the Regulatory Environment for doing Business in India, set up by Government of India, Technical Committee to review the form and presentation of the Balance Sheet of the Reserve Bank of India, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Standing Committee on Accounting issues and invitee to the Committee set up by the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) to assist in convergence to IFRS by banks and National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards. He has also been member of Accounting Standards Board of ICAI, Vision and Restructuring Committee and Auditing Practicing Committee of ICAI and the Secretarial Standards Boards of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

Mr. Ramesh is a regular speaker at various programmes and workshops conducted by ICAI, the Institute of Internal Auditors, RBI, CII, SEBI on the matters of professional interest. He has co-authored publication by CCH titled iGAAP – Financial Reporting Standards in India including a comparison with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and is a member of Board of Studies and the Faculty of Commerce of Osmania University.

Mr. Ramesh graduated in Commerce and is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

Based in New Delhi, Mr. Wilson joined Air India in mid-2022 after 26 years with Singapore Airlines (SIA) working in various senior roles for both the flagship airline as well as Scoot, its wholly owned low-cost subsidiary of which he was the founding CEO. 

As CEO and MD, Mr. Wilson is leading Vihaan.ai, Air India’s comprehensive five-year program to transform the formerly state-owned carrier, now part of the Tata Group. into a world-class global airline with an Indian heart

Air India’s transformation has already seen the airline place the largest single order for new aircraft in aviation history, comprising 470 wide- and narrow-body aircraft. It also entails a complete overhaul of equipment, product, technology, systems and culture, and dramatic network expansion.

In addition to transformation of the flagship airline, Mr. Wilson is steering the integration of subsidiary airlines Air India Express and Air Asia India into a single low-cost carrier, and, subject to regulatory approval, the merger of Air India with Vistara, a full service airline co-owned by Tata and Singapore Airlines.

To support the Group’s growth, Air India is also in the process of building a world-class Training Academy to provide pilots,  cabin crew, engineers and a skilled workforce that will also support the Indian aviation ecosystem.

Mr. Wilson (born July 1971 in Christchurch, New Zealand) began his career with SIA in New Zealand in 1996 after obtaining a Master of Commerce with 1st Class Honours in Business Administration from the University of Canterbury. He worked for SIA in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan before returning to Singapore in 2011 as the founding CEO of Scoot until 2016. He then served on SIA’s Management Committee as Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing, before returning for a second stint as the CEO of Scoot in 2020.

Mr. Wilson is married with no children.

Mr. Nipun Aggarwal joined Air India in January 2022 after leading the acquisition of Air India for Tata Sons. As Chief Commercial & Transformation Officer, he now leads several important functions at Air India, including aircraft acquisition and financing, product development, strategy and planning, sales and marketing, loyalty, revenue management, network planning and scheduling, strategic procurement, strategic alliances and M&A. He is at the forefront of driving transformation, change management and merger integration activities across the Air India group. Mr. Aggarwal is also the chairman of Air India SATS Airport Services Private Limited (AISATS) and a member of the board of directors for Air India Express, AIX Connect and Tata Electronics. 

Mr. Aggarwal has more than 28 years of experience across industries and has held multiple roles across corporate finance, M&A, financing, strategy, business development and operations.

Prior to Air India, Mr. Aggarwal worked as Senior Vice President at Tata Sons, where he played a pivotal role in the strategic transformation of several Tata group companies between 2017 and 2022 as part of the Group Chairman and Group CFO Office. Mr. Aggarwal led several marquee acquisitions and corporate restructuring projects at Tata Sons. He has also served on the board of several Tata group companies including Tata Housing, Tata Value Homes, Tata Projects, Tata Power Odisha Discoms and Tata Urban Infrastructure.

Mr. Aggarwal has also worked in investment banking with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in corporate banking at Standard Chartered Bank, and as Commercial Advisor with BP PLC. He started his career with Larsen & Toubro as Graduate Engineer Trainee.

He holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta and Bachelors in Electricals Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering. He likes to travel and play badminton in his free time. He is married and has two kids.

Dr. Suresh Dutt Tripathi, Chief Human Resources Officer, is an HR professional with varied industry experience. Before Air India, he was Vice President of Human Resources at Tata Steel.

He has 40 years of HR experience across different industries—steel, chemical, IT, education—in both public and private sectors (SAIL, HCL Perot Systems, Mascon Global Ltd, SRF, Sri Educare and Tata Steel).

Dr. Suresh has served on the board of directors for JUSCO (a subsidiary of Tata Steel) and Indian Iron & Steel Sector Skill Council (IISSSC). He chaired the board of The European Centre for Executive Development, CEDEP (INSEAD, France).

He also contributes as a member of various committees of CII and AIMA at the national level. With a master’s in physics from Delhi University and a PG Diploma in social work from the University of Kolkata, Dr. Suresh has also been trained at multiple schools of eminence including Cambridge, Oxford, Barkley, IIMs and IISc.

Dr. Suresh has been conferred Ph.D. Honoris Causa, by Manav Rachna University for his contribution in the field of human resources management.

A keen sports lover, Suresh is also a student pilot and loves visiting places and meeting people.

Mr. Vinod Hejmadi was named Air India’s Chief Financial Officer in April 2022, after over six years in his role as Director of Finance. Mr. Hejmadi has been with Air India for almost 35 years and has held roles across finance functions including revenue accounting, audit, insurance, commodity, hedging, strategic procurement—fuel, aircraft leasing, MIS and budget. He was on the board of directors at Air India until his appointment as CFO.

Mr. Hejmadi has held leadership positions internationally, working as Finance Manager for Air India in Geneva and Chicago.

Mr. Hejmadi was a central member of the management team who formulated the turn-around plan for Air India in 2012. He was also a key participant in the discussions and deliberations on the disinvestment of Air India as part of the Evaluation Sub-Committee (ESC) of the Government of India.

Mr. Hejmadi is a rank holder and fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He holds a graduate degree in Commerce.

Mr. Hejmadi sits on the board of directors for Air India Express and Air India SATS(JV).

Dr. Satya Ramaswamy is on a mission to make Air India the most technologically advanced airline in the world. He heads our Digital & Technology organization that has twin responsibilities — owning Air India’s digital channels and helping all our departments deploy technologies to delight customers and achieve operational excellence. Dr. Satya has 30 years of software engineering, product management and business leadership experience in India and the United States. He views aviation as the greatest accomplishment of humankind and brings enthusiasm for the industry to his role at Air India. In previous roles, he has helped multiple leading global airlines execute digital transformation programs. An entrepreneurial leader who sets a fast pace for his organization, Dr. Satya is passionate about ‘zero to one’ technology journeys. An early adopter of digital, he has witnessed the evolution of mobile technologies, cloud, big data analytics, social media, and modern AI technologies from their earliest days. His current interests include the exploration of quantum computing to solve some of the hardest optimization challenges in the airline industry.

Before joining Air India, Dr. Satya was Head of Strategic Initiatives at Tata Digital, where he was responsible for identifying and building products and systems that gave Tata Digital a competitive edge in the market. At Tata Consultancy Services, he helped build the digital services business from the ground up from 2010, supporting global customers across industries on digital reimagination journeys. Before TCS, Dr. Satya was the Founder & CEO of Silicon Valley startup Brightfon, Inc., which he created in 2008 with the vision of bringing e-commerce like interactivity to the instore shopping experience, pioneering the use of mobile applications, cloud, big data and social media in physical retail. Prior to this, he was Head of Product Management for Boston area venture-capital funded startup Veveo, Inc., focused on web-scale video search, discovery, and mobile delivery. Earlier he was responsible for product management for mobile packet switching infrastructure in Motorola, Inc. While at Motorola, he contributed to North American telecom industry standards to bring Internet to mobile phones in late 1990s and early 2000s. He was part of the software engineering team at Motorola, working in late 1990s on some of the earliest digital mobile phones such as the digital StarTAC.

Dr. Satya has a Ph.D in distributed computing from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and an MBA in finance and marketing from the Kellogg School of Management, Chicago. He has twelve granted US patents to his credit. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area and has deep connections with academic institutions and startups in the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. Dr. Satya is a die-hard hockey fan and is very proud of Air India’s hockey legacy and its Olympians.

Captain RS Sandhu is an alumnus of The Lawrence School, Sanawar and has approximately 20,000 hours of incident/accident-free flight time. He has piloted a variety of aircraft types in his career, including the Boeing B737, Airbus 300, Airbus 320 family, and the B787 Dreamliner. He is also a Designated Examiner (DE).

In his 41 years of experience in civil aviation, Captain RS Sandhu has worked as a pilot on short, medium and long-haul flights. He has also been successful in introducing new routes, centralizing and streamlining operations, and reducing pilot attrition.

As Chief of Operations at Air India, he is responsible for heading departments including flight operations, standards, operations strategy and projects, technical training, central training and licensing, flight dispatch and crew management system (CMS), flight operations engineering, operations risk and compliance, and inflight services. He has successfully and cost effectively headed operations during various geopolitical scenarios and effectively managed operations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Captain Sandhu previously held various positions across Air India in training, flight safety and operations.

Captain Sandhu's experience also includes policy making for civil aviation in India as a Flight Operations Inspector with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). In this role, he was instrumental in enabling the acceptance of type rating training organizations in regulatory standards and prepared a Civil Aviation Regulations (CAR) on the subject.

He has completed various courses, including the EU-India In-flight Security, EU-India Flight Operations Inspector advanced course, ICAO-COSCAP - Operational Safety, ICAO-COSCAP - Safety Management Systems, and IOSA Awareness Training.

Captain Sandhu lives in New Delhi with his wife and he’s blessed with two daughters who are based in the UK.

In his role as Chief Customer Experience and Ground Handling Officer, Mr. Rajesh Dogra is responsible for customer experience and airport operations for Air India globally. He is deeply engaged in service transformation initiatives at Air India and is building a robust airports operations and customer services framework which is enhancing customer experience at all touchpoints. Highly passionate about excellence in customer services, Mr. Dogra has spearheaded various large public services transformation programs in India as well as abroad and won many awards.

Mr. Dogra has over 28 years of rich experience in large scale public services delivery, eGovernance, business operations, project management, IT driven service transformation and people management. He is a Tata veteran and before moving to Air India in August 2022, he was the Global Program Director of Passport Seva Program at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He set up and, for over 10 years, managed India's most iconic passport program for Ministry of External Affairs, which led to massive transformation of Indian passport services globally. During the initial phase of his career, Mr. Dogra worked with a public sector financial institution where he managed operations and service delivery for North India as well as for NRIs globally.

Mr. Dogra completed his master’s degree in financial management from NMIMS Mumbai and graduated from Hansraj College, Delhi University. He has also completed several management development programs at TCS, IIM Ahmedabad, TMTC Pune and INSEAD. 

Sisirakanta Dash manages the maintenance and engineering of Air India’s growing fleet. With more than 35 years of aviation experience, Mr. Dash is a licenced engineer for Airbus, Boeing, and Bombardier aircraft.

Previously, Mr. Dash was head of engineering and maintenance at Vistara. As one of the first employees at IndiGo, Mr. Dash was part of the launch team and held multiple positions—quality manager, line maintenance manager, base maintenance manager, tech services manager, and production planning manager—before being named director of engineering and maintenance.

Across his roles, Mr. Dash has been instrumental on various contract negotiations with OEMs, lessors, and vendors—with a consistent goal of cost optimization.

Mr. Dash has done groundbreaking work in Indian aviation. He led multiple initiatives, introducing new, now widely adopted, technologies to the industry, including RFID for onboard emergency equipment, e-logbook, QR codes for engineering licenses and tools issuance.

Mr. Dash is a DGCA-approved examiner and a member of various regulatory committees including ARAP, Airworthiness Regulation Change, and CII. He sat on the Maintenance Review Board for Pratt & Whitney engines. Mr. Dash holds multiple management certifications, having completed leadership courses at IIM Ahmedabad, Harvard, and Oxford.