Abhishek Mahapatra joins Nissan India as head PR and CSR

 16th January 2017    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

Abhishek Mahapatra, formerly with Uber India and with Ford in APAC, has taken over as head of PR and CSR at Nissan India. Today is Mahapatra's first day at Nissan. Mahapatra joined Uber last year in Juy 2016 after heading  technology (Smart) and product strategy communications for passenger vehicles at Ford Motor Company in the Asia Pacific region.

 Mahapatra said that his time with Uber was a " Short but an exciting ride and I learnt a lot at Uber. I convey my best wishes to the team."

Mahapatra, who is a seasoned communicator told PRmoment India that Nissan presents him with a great opportunity to go back to his passion - automotives. He added, that, " While Nissan is a reputed global brand, it's still young in India. So this is a tremendous opportunity to bring in creativity and innovation to Nissan's storytelling to Indian stakeholders." This is in keeping with Nissan's brand philosophy of " Innovation that excites." 

Mahapatra, takes over from Deepa Thomas who joined Nissan from Mahindra and Mahindra in April 2016 and quit in December last year. In his previous avatar at Ford, Mahapatra also managed communications for Japan and South Korea. He specialises in team building, corporate and product communications and crisis management and advocacy.  Mahapatra has also worked with Edelman,Comma Consulting, Hyundai Motor India Ltd. and IPAN Hill + Knowlton.

Uber India has had it's challenges maintaining PR leads in India. In 2015, Chavvi Leekha stayed as head PR for less than 3 months. The company then did not have a PR lead till Mahapatra took charge in July 2016. Now Amy Kunrojpanya, Uber APAC's director of public policy and communications will be interim head of PR for Uber India.