Ganesh Iyer heads USA arm of Chinese car maker NIO
This week, NIO announced that it sold 12,206 electric vehicles in China, during the third quarter of 2020. Revenues for the Chinese automaker were $667 million, up 146% from the third quarter of 2019.
NIO designs, jointly manufactures, and sells electric vehicles, which use advanced connectivity, autonomous driving and artificial intelligence tools. The company says its Chinese name, Weilai, which means Blue Sky Coming, reflects its “vision and commitment to a more environmentally friendly future.”
The plan is to create a comfortable "living space” for passengers in the car, Padmasree Warrior told Business Insider in 2017. She was NIO’s U.S. chief executive at the time. Since the car drives itself, she added, a passenger can sleep, watch movies, and take conference calls.
Nio introduced its first vehicle in China in 2018. The price of its entry level ES6 sports utility vehicle, without a battery, is about $40,000, slightly more than Tesla’s Model 3 sedan. Nio leases electric batteries to its car buyers for about $150 a month. By August, the company had already set up 143 battery swap stations in 64 cities in China, swapping over 800,000 batteries.
Founded in 2014, Nio raised over $1 billion in venture funding from Chinese giants Tencent and Baidu as well as America’s Sequoia Capital. Its apparent goal is to be the leading premium electric vehicle seller in China as well as the world, overtaking Tesla.
In 2018, the stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Riding a bubble of investor interest in electric vehicle companies, NIO is one of the best performing NYSE stocks this year. At a recent $49, the stock has gained more than 2,700% over the past year. While currently losing money, NIO has a market value of $67 billion, about 15 times its estimated 2021 revenues.
In 2018, Padmasree Warrior resigned and Ganesh V. Iyer was named managing director of NIO’s U.S. operations. Iyer, unlike Warrior, was not given the CEO title, nor appointed to NIO’s board.
Iyer, 52, joined NIO from Tesla Motors in 2016 as the global Chief Information Officer. Though listed on the NYSE, NIO does not disclose the annual salary and compensation for Iyer, as well as other employees. Also, its documents do not disclose the shares and options owned, except saying that Iyer owns less than 1% of the company’s stock. His stock options are priced from $0.27 to $2.55 each, giving him a theoretical gain of more than $47.50 on each share, at the current stock price.
As vice president for nearly five years at Tesla, he led its e-commerce, service, business intelligence systems and retail operations. Earlier Iyer held senior management roles in information technology (IT) at VMWare, a software vendor. At Juniper Networks, he reorganized business processes to optimize IT investments across all business units.
Prior to Juniper, Iyer led IT development, operations and product engineering at WebEx, a digital video communication platform that was acquired by Cisco. Early in his career, he worked as a consultant for Electronic Data Systems and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), implementing IT systems for Oracle, Total Petroleum, Tata Chemicals, the Mumbai Stock Exchange and Sun Microsystems. His five years at TCS, included assignments in London.
Iyer earned a BS in chemical engineering, with a minor in mathematics, from the Regional Engineering College, Calicut, India.
In 2015, Padmasree Warrior was appointed as the chief executive of NIO U.S., global chief development officer and member of NIO’s board of directors. She led a team of over 300 engineers and other employees based in North San Jose, California.
Warrior, who is on the board of directors at Microsoft, was earlier chief technology officer at Cisco Systems. She has an M.S. from Cornell University and a B.S. from IIT Delhi, both in chemical engineering.
In a LinkedIn blog she writes about the advice given by her father “when I was a kid.” It forms the basis for her five-point leadership principles:
· Have a big vision and a detailed strategy to make that vision a reality
· Be ambitious and be self-aware in reaching your goals
· Focus on the big picture and pay attention to the details
· Be a powerful leader and be approachable
· Be decisive and open to input