Harman appoints Pradeep Chaudhry as country manager, India

NYSE-listed Harman, a connected technologies company for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, has appointed Pradeep Chaudhry as country manager for its India operations, effective 1 January 2016.

Chaudhry succeeds M Lakshmi Narayan, who will serve as an advisory chairman until December 2016.

Based in Bengaluru, India, Chaudhry will also continue to serve in his current role as chief financial officer of the Harman Connected Services division.

In his new role, he will be responsible for all of Harman's sales, marketing, R&D and engineering operations in the country. With more than 7,500 employees, India is now home to HARMAN's largest concentration of software engineers and designers, focused on developing innovative systems and solutions that leverage cloud, data and analytics to advance the connected car, connected enterprise and connected lifestyle.

Chaudhry will report to Dinesh C. Paliwal, chairman, president and CEO of HARMAN on country management matters and to Sandy Rowland, Harman's chief financial officer, in his role as CFO of that division.

''Over the last several years, we have invested significant resources in building our R&D and manufacturing capabilities in India and have worked hard to earn a position as the technology partner of choice to the most prestigious companies there. With the recent acquisition of Symphony Teleca, we are now poised to capitalise on our talent and resources to grow our business in India, particularly in the automotive, consumer, professional and enterprise markets,'' said Paliwal.

''We are confident that Chaudhry will expand Harman's influence as an innovation leader and employer of choice in this exciting and rapidly evolving region,'' he added.

Over his 23-year career, Pradeep has held positions of increasing responsibility in Operations, Finance and Management in both India and the US. He joined Harman Connected Services through the 2015 acquisition of Symphony Teleca, where he served as EVP and CFO since 2009. Pradeep holds a bachelor's degree from Wabash College with a double major in Mathematics and Philosophy and a Master's degree in Business Administration from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Harman has development centres across seven cities in India and a manufacturing facility and an acoustics lab in Pune.