Mumbai: Barely nine months after assuring investors that he was in it for the long haul, Jindal Steel Ltd chief executive officer (CEO) Gautam Malhotra is exiting the role, becoming the latest chapter in the Naveen Jindal-led company's long-running story of senior management churn.
Jindal Steel informed the stock exchanges late on 11 July that 15 July will be Malhotra’s last day with the company. Crucially, his resignation letter did not bear a date, nor did the company clarify when it was sent.
Former CEO of Vedanta's aluminium business Rajiv Kumar is expected to succeed Malhotra, said four executives directly aware of the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity when discussing confidential company matters.
Jindal Steel, Malhotra and Kumar did not respond to Mint’s requests for comment.
Separately, former Hindustan Zinc chief financial officer (CFO) Sandeep Modi is expected to assume the same role at Jindal Steel, according to one of the three executives cited above. Modi left the Vedanta Group firm at the end of May.
Modi did not respond to a request for comment.
The shuffle highlights the high churn in senior leadership at both Jindal Steel and the Vedanta Group.
Malhotra’s resignation is particularly striking because, within a day of taking charge last October, he had sought to calm investor concerns about the company's revolving door of top executives.
"I tend to stick around," he had said during Jindal Steel's September-quarter earnings call on 30 October 2025, when analysts questioned the frequent changes in the company's leadership team.
Now, Malhotra has become the latest senior executive to make an early exit.
Leadership churn
Over the past five years, Jindal Steel has seen its former managing director, Bimlendra Jha, leave the job after just 18 months, while its CFO office has experienced near-uninterrupted churn, Mint reported earlier. Since 2020, the Delhi-headquartered steelmaker has appointed six chief financial officers, four of whom served for less than a year. The most recent, Mayank Gupta, resigned in July after only six months in the role.
Meanwhile, Kumar left billionaire Anil Agarwal's aluminium company before completing his three-year term, which began on 26 March 2025, and days after the company demerged from its parent, Vedanta Ltd. Mint could not ascertain his date of cessation; however, two executives cited above said he has already joined Jindal Steel. Before joining Vedanta Aluminium, Kumar spent several years at Tata Steel, where he served as vice-president of operations.
A Vedanta spokesperson said pursuant to scheme of demerger, the aluminium undertaking has been transferred to Vedanta Aluminium Metal Ltd. The changes in board composition of VAML were duly disclosed in the information memorandum filed with the stock exchanges at the time of listing.
CFO Modi had resigned from his position at Hindustan Zinc to pursue career opportunities outside the company, with his departure effective on 30 May 2026, as per a stock exchange disclosure by the company.
The Vedanta Group has had its share of executive departures, leaving within a short span of joining.
John Slaven, the former CEO of the aluminium business at undivided Vedanta exited in September 2024 a year after joining the company. Sonal Shrivastava, a former regional finance chief at Holcim who took charge as Vedanta’s chief financial officer in June 2023, left within four months in October that year. Omar Davis, who had been appointed as Vedanta Resources Ltd’s president of strategy in March 2023, resigned in April 2024.
No notice periods
The four-day gap between the announcement of Malhotra’s resignation and his last day at Jindal Steel has raised governance concerns, as top executives typically serve long notice periods to ensure a smooth transition. Listed companies are required to disclose the resignation of key managerial personnel within 24 hours, as per the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s regulations.
The pattern, as observed earlier with the company, was evident when former CFOs Gupta and Hemant Kumar Khanna stepped down with immediate effect, while Ramkumar Ramaswamy and Deepak Sogani served only 15-day notice periods before leaving.
“From a corporate governance perspective, the disclosures leave room for questions,” said Shriram Subramanian, the managing director of proxy advisory firm InGovern.
A CEO's exit was a significant management change, and investors would expect clarity on the resignation timeline, an appropriately dated resignation letter, and details of the succession and transition process, he said. The lack of a date on Malhotra’s resignation letter and the short interval between the announcement and the effective date raise corporate governance concerns about the adequacy and timeliness of disclosures, he said.
“Within 3-4 days, how will the outgoing CEO ensure a smooth transition process?” he said
Expansion plan
During fiscal year 2026 (FY26), Jindal Steel commissioned key facilities, including a 4.6 million tonnes-per-annum blast furnace and two basic oxygen furnaces at its Angul plant in Odisha. These expansions increased the company’s total steelmaking capacity to 15.6 million tonnes per annum.
India’s fourth-largest steelmaker Jindal Steel reported a 20% in net profit attributable to owners to ₹3,367 crore, while revenue from operations grew 8% to ₹53,553 crore, as per its exchange filings.
Jindal Steel is yet to lay out a five-year capacity expansion plan, unlike its peers JSW Steel and Tata Steel. In May, during a post-earnings call, Malhotra said the company’s focus is on “sweating the assets and getting returns out of them.”
Separate from its listed entity, Jindal has, over the past five years, built an end-to-end steel business with assets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This includes mines in Mozambique and Cameroon, steel units in Oman and a downstream value-added steel facility in the Czech Republic, Mint reported earlier.
- CEO Gautam Malhotra resigns abruptly, just nine months after joining the company.
- Vedanta Aluminium's Rajiv Kumar, likely successor, ex-Hindustan Zinc CFO Modi joins too.
- A four-day notice gap raises governance concerns about transition planning and disclosure.
- Jindal Steel has cycled through six CFOs, four lasting less than a year.
- FY26 profit rose 20% to ₹3,367 crore; capacity expansion plan still pending.