Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) chief executive officer Thierry Bolloré has resigned from the Tata Motors arm citing personal reasons.

Tata Motors said Bolloré has put in his papers. His last day at the British marquee brand will be December 31.

The homegrown auto major added that Adrian Mardell will take over from Wednesday as interim CEO at JLR. Mardell is with JLR for more than three decades and is a member of the executive board for three years.

“I am immensely proud of what we have achieved together at JLR over the last two years. The company’s transformation and acceleration towards a sustainable, profitable future as a modern luxury business is underway at great pace.

“I would like to thank the whole team for their dedication and passion and I wish the entire organisation the very best for the future,’’ Bolloré said.

He resigned just days after higher margins at JLR helped Tata Motors report a lower consolidated loss of Rs 944.61 crore in the second quarter.

The British subsidiary reported revenues of £5.3 billion, a rise of 36 per cent over £3.9 billion a year ago.

Bolloré was appointed to the role of JLR’s CEO in September 2020. He started his career at Michelin in 1999 and worked at Faurecia Emissions Control Technologies and Renault, where he was the CEO from 2018.

Beauty products

The Tata group is reportedly planning to ramp up its beauty business that it exited nearly 24 years ago by opening at least 20 stores that will have digital features such as virtual makeup kiosks and digital skin tests to facilitate purchases of premium cosmetic products.

According to a Reuters report, the stores will pit the Tatas against Nykaa and LVMH’s Sephora in India’s $16 billion beauty and personal care market.

The Tatas had created the Lakme brand, which it sold to Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) in 1998.

In 2016, group arm Trent started selling the Studiowest range of makeup products at its Westside stores.

The target buyer for the product is a “beauty enthusiast” in India aged between 18 years and 45 years who buys foreign brands such as Estee Lauder’s M.A.C and Bobbi Brown.

The Tatas may join hands with The Honest Company, Ellis Brooklyn and Gallinee as potential partners. The group is also reportedly in talks with more than two dozen companies to supply exclusive products to the new stores.

The proposed stores are likely to have a bright red facade showing the brand Tata CLiQ Palette — a recently launched beauty shopping app, with almost 70 per cent of the products being skincare and makeups.

Inside the stores, the group is planning to install technology allowing customers to try on dozens of lipstick shades virtually on screens and take digital skin tests to find out what products might work best for them.

Sephora, which has been in India for around a decade, has 26 outlets.

The technology is not new and is in use by other beauty retailers around the world, but this venture into what industry experts call “experiential retail” is still a relatively new concept in Indian malls and high street shops.

“Experiential retail is going to be a big thing in India as more customers will spend their leisure time at such stores,” said Pankaj Renjhen, joint MD at Anarock Retail consultancy.

“In the premium segment - where a customer is looking for things beyond price — experiential retail helps trigger impulse shopping and can entice them.” Reliance Retail also has ambitious plans in the beauty segment.

With inputs from Reuters