Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverages firm, is betting on three men in their early forties, with experience in multiple functions in different markets, to drive its ambitious growth plans in India.
In one of its most significant reshuffles in a decade, Coca-Cola India had last Friday handed over new responsibilities to three company 'veterans' Debabrata Mukherjee, Sumanta Datta and Bhupinder Suri to help build and implement its strategies to capture growth opportunities in a challenging economic environment.
In one of its most significant reshuffles in a decade, Coca-Cola India had last Friday handed over new responsibilities to three company 'veterans' Debabrata Mukherjee, Sumanta Datta and Bhupinder Suri to help build and implement its strategies to capture growth opportunities in a challenging economic environment.
"The new team is a set of system leaders with proven business acumen in multiple functions, geographies and people leadership capabilities," Venkatesh Kini, deputy president of India and Southwest Asia business unit at The Coca-Cola Company, says.
Mukherjee will manage the firm's marketing and commercial divisions while Datta and Suri will share the operations leadership. Two of the three names, Mukherjee and Datta, have been given one extra role each besides what they were already doing.
Experts say the move will help the organisation take quick decisions by cutting out reporting layers, get closer to young consumers and broaden product portfolio.
"With a young team, the strategy appears to be to come closer to the consumer and revive the market," Sangeeta Pal, partner at search firm Transearch, says.
Jyorden Misra, MD at consulting search firm Spearhead Intersearch, says, "Such moves, aimed at finding new bandwidth within the organisation and reworking people strategies, sends out a strong message to external stakeholders that the company is innovating at the organisation level too, not just at a brand benchmark level."
The trio have their credentials in place. They have worked in multiple roles in different countries and are known to 'go after' targets.
Mukherjee, who will take charge as vice-president, marketing and commercial, led the marketing function at Coca-Cola Korea for four years, a challenging market with consumer preferences starkly different from India. He helped turn around the business there besides launching Georgia coffee and Glaceau vitamin water.
In a first such move for the company in India, Kini has clubbed the roles of marketing and commercial under Mukherjee, to synergise focus on commercial operations and marketing. Combining the two functions under one unit head is a best practice Coca-Cola follows in many world markets.
A B-school graduate from Kolkata University, Mukherjee, 43, worked with Hindustan Unilever for close to five years before joining Coca-Cola in 1998. In his 15 years at the beverages firm, Mukherjee has worked across marketing, sales and general management.
"Debu (Mukherjee) was an A-lister at HUL and did very well when Coca-Cola sent him to Korea. He is CEO material," Vibhav Dhawan, partner at search firm Positive Moves, says. Datta, 42, who will take over as company bottling operations VP, has been with the firm for 18 years including more than five in China, Coca-Cola's third largest market and known to be a critical learning ground. Son of former HUL chairman SM Datta, his mandate as the company bottling operations VP will be to deliver volume and profitability.
Before joining Coca-Cola in 1995, this Rutgers, New Jersey B-schooler worked briefly with tobacco-to-hotels giant ITC. Suri, who will oversee the other half of bottling operations as VP for franchise bottling operations, too, has been with the company for 17 years now. An XLRI alumnus, he has played a key role in driving a complex 'route to market' strategy to drive products to relevant markets.
The firm will now bank on Suri, 44, to drive growth and align closely with its 11 franchise bottlers. All three will take up their new roles starting October 1 and report directly to Kini.
Their performance will be crucial if Coca-Cola is to deliver its 2020 target of making India one of its top five volume markets, up from seventh rank now. Industry watchers say it will be a challenging task as India will need to displace one of the existing top five markets — the US, China, Japan, Mexico or Brazil — each of which consumes more than one billion cases a year. India is currently a 700 million-cases market.
