Suzlon board appoints J P Chalasani as Chief Executive Officer

The board of clean energy solution provider Suzlon Energy has appointed J P Chalasani as the company's Chief Executive Officer following the resignation of Ashwani Kumar from the post. Ashwani Kumar has resigned as the CEO with effect from 5th April 2023 on account of personal reasons, a BSE filing stated.

The Board of Directors, at its meeting held on 4th April 2023 has, inter alia, approved the appointment of J P Chalasani as the Chief Executive Officer and one of the key managerial personnel of the Company, to act as the Group Chief Executive Officer, with immediate effect, i.e. from 5th April 2023, the filing said.

Chalasani had been Group CEO of Suzlon for the period from April 2016 to July 2020 and continued as Strategic Advisor to the Suzlon Group thereafter.

Chalasani has over 40 years of experience in the public and private sector across the entire gamut of the power sector (power generation projects, transmission, distribution, trading and coal mining).

Prior to his earlier stint as the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Company, Chalasani was the Group CEO and Managing Director of Punj Lloyd since January 2014 and was responsible for the energy, infrastructure and defence business for the group globally, which is close to USD 1.8 Billion.

Prior to joining Punj Lloyd, Chalasani had spent over 18 years with the Reliance Group. He joined Reliance Group (undivided) as a Vice President in 1995 and worked on a number of assignments for the group.

He also served as the first Chief Executive Officer and the Director on the Board of BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna Power Ltd.

In 2003, along with Anil Ambani, he was appointed to the Board of Reliance Infrastructure as Director Business Development. Post demerger of the Reliance Group, Chalasani was with the ADAG group.

He took over as CEO of Reliance Power in March 2008, soon after the company completed its big initial public offer.

Chalasani created a 10 people team to start Reliance Power and grew it to a 30,000 MW (generating, under construction and under development) company in 2013.

Prior to Reliance Group, Chalasani started his career at NTPC and worked there for 15 years in various capacities, including Special Technical Assistant to the Chairman and Managing Director.