Vaibhav Taneja Is The New Indian-Origin CFO Of Tesla.

Taneja was the chief accounting officer at Tesla before taking up CFO duties as an additional charge. Taneja had made his mark in business before Tesla, having spent 17 years at Price WaterhouseCoopers since joining the firm in 1996. He has also been appointed head of Tesla India as he steps up his efforts to enter the Indian market.

Tesla has named Vaibhav Taneja, an Indian-origin man who was once the company’s senior accounting officer, as its chief financial officer (CFO) as it gears up for an India launch of its electric vehicle (EV).

Taneja will simultaneously assume both duties in place of Zachary Kirkhorn, who is departing the organisation after 13 years of service. Kirkhorn will stay in his position through the end of the year, even though the Elon Musk-led tech company has not given a reason for the resignation. In a LinkedIn post, Kirkhorn said, “Being a part of this firm is a rare experience, and I’m tremendously pleased with the work we’ve done together since I joined more than 13 years ago.

While Deepak Ahuja served as Tesla’s CFO for over a decade across two stints, the EV giant has chosen Indians to high positions before, and the timing of Vaibhav Taneja’s hiring is particularly significant as Tesla prepares to prepare for a debut in India.

 
Who is Vaibhav Taneja?
Vaibhav Taneja is a University of Delhi commerce graduate and a Chartered Accountant( CA) by profession. He first joined Tesla when the EV mammoth acquired SolarCity in 2016, where he served as vice chairman of counting operations and commercial regulator.

Taneja gained notoriety at PriceWaterhouseCoopers before joining Tesla, where he worked for 17 years after joining the company in 1996. The current Tesla CFO has more than 20 years of counting moxie from working with numerous global IT, fiscal, retail, and telecom associations.

Also driving Tesla’s incursion into India is Vaibhav Taneja. Taneja was chosen to serve as a director for Tesla India Motors and Energy Private Limited in January 2021.

The hiring coincides with Tesla’s efforts to increase deals and expand its request share. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, the bus major indeed cut the pricing of its motorcars to achieve that, which hurt its formerly reduced efficiency-leading perimeter.

Tesla’s India Bid
 
According to Reuters, which cited two people with firsthand knowledge of the situation, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal recently met with senior Tesla officials stationed in the US in a closed-door meeting to discuss the automaker’s ambitions to set up a production facility in the nation.
Tesla has stated interest in establishing a manufacturing plant in India that would develop a low-cost EV for the Indian market as well as for export that would cost $24,000 (about INR 20 Lakhs), or almost 25% less than Tesla’s current entry model.

Senior executives from the automaker have been meeting with regulators since May. Later in July, Invest India representatives were also seen by Tesla’s senior public policy and business development executive, Rohan Patel, and a vice president for supply chain, Roshan Thomas.

Since Elon Musk and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in New York in June, their encounter with Goyal has been the most well-known.