Vishak Kumar is the CEO of Madura Fashion & Lifestyle (MFL) and Whole-time Director of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd., (ABFRL). Vishak has been with the company since 1995 when he joined as a Management Trainee at MFL.
During his 28-year long stint, Vishak has worked across functions and occupied various roles in sales, marketing and retail. Prior to his stint as CEO of Madura, Vishak was the CEO of Aditya Birla Retail Ltd (ABRL), where he was instrumental in transforming and scaling up the “More” Supermarket and Hypermarket business.
Vishak has won multiple accolades for his stellar contribution across all industries that he has worked in, including fashion and retail. Within the ABG umbrella, in 2022, Vishak was honored as “Leader of Leaders” at Aditya Birla Group’s Chairman’s Awards. He was also conferred with the prestigious ‘Aditya Birla Fellow’ title from ABG in 2015.
Vishak is an IIM Bangalore alumnus and a computer engineer from BIT Ranchi. A keen sportsperson, he enjoys playing squash, badminton and tennis.
Amitabh Suri is an Entrepreneurial & Result driven business leader with 24 years of experience in the Apparel & Lifestyle industry. A history of increasing sales & growing bottom line while spearheading operational improvements to drive productivity & reduce cost. A decisive leader with proven success in new market identification & strategic positioning of brands, excelling in dynamic & demanding environments while remaining pragmatic & focused. Principally believe in nurturing one’s team to their true potential, while remaining customer-obsessed. He was a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Indian Terrain, over his 18 years of association with the brand he saw the brand move from a start-up to going public & listing on the Stock Exchange. He played pivotal roles in making Indian Terrain (415 Crores) a leading brand in modern retail. While being responsible for the P&L, He led the transformation of Indian Terrain from a wholesale category business into a Premium Sportswear Lifestyle Brand.
At Landmark Dubai, he was CEO of Iconic, a fast fashion brand with a turnover of 300 million AED, retailing across 38 stores in 4 countries, (UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and KSA), He successfully repositioned the brand, Aligned Supply Chains while bringing in new Vendor Collaborations. He was also responsible for optimizing the retail construct by bringing in focus on the key businesses & expanding the brands online, making Iconic an Omni retailer. As the President of Exclusive Brands & Private Label at Shoppers Stop,he was responsible for all in-house private labels, celebrity brands & exclusive international brands (800 crores).
He successfully launched 4 exclusive brands, Jones NY (Women’s Western wear) & French Connection UK (Men’s Wear), Back to Earth (a sustainable Women’s Indian wear), Glam X Disha Patani (Celebrity Line Women’s Western Wear). Currently, he is the Chief Executive Officer U.S. Polo Assn, the biggest Casual wear brand in the country ( 1800 + Crores), U.S Polo Assn. is a smart casual Iconic American lifestyle brand, which has product offerings including menswear , womenswear , kids wear , Footwear & Inner wear.
Deepak Chhabra is the Managing Director of Timex Group India. With over two decades of diverse and insightful Leadership experience in the fields of Retail, Brand Management, Strategic Business Planning, P&L Management, Sales, and Merchandising, Deepak will be spearheading Timex Group’s Business Transformation and Strategic Growth Strategy in India. He will be responsible for strategizing and driving initiatives delivering superior brand and customer experiences through innovative business planning solutions.
Before Timex, Deepak worked with Tupperware India as MD where he led the brand’s Business Transformation from being just a direct selling company to a harmonized multi-channel strategy and introduced Retail, e-tail, and e-commerce to increase consumer access which helped in Brand achieve higher market share; also, the transformation from a Kitchenware to a complete Homeware Brand and from largely Plastics to Material agnostic Brand. He also worked with Crocs India as MD for 3 years before moving to Tupperware, where he was instrumental in ramping up business and vastly improving Brand’s reach and relevance. A Footwear Technologist and Marketeer by qualification, he started his career in 1996 with Phoenix International Limited and since then has held various leadership roles and led strategic initiatives for Marquee brands such as Reliance Retail, Skechers, and Sprandi in addition to Tupperware and Crocs. Chhabra, 48, is married to Kavita & has 2 teenage sons, Abhigya & Aaruksh. He is a highly self-motivated and driven leader who believes in going beyond his comfort zone and taking risks. More often than not, such risks have enriched throughout his professional journey, and he firmly believes that one should accept their failure as much as we celebrate our success.
Jayesh Sali is an experienced consumer & technology global brand leader, currently designated as the Head
of Marketing at Reliance Retail- Fashion & Lifestyle Business, leading premium brands and marketing
innovation across India. As part of the Senior Leadership Team, he is responsible for leading all internal &
external communications as well as brand initiatives to meet the organizational goals. Recently he has been
recognized as Asia’s 100 Power Leaders in Marketing & Communications 2022 by White Page
International.
As the former Head of Brands, Marketing & Digital at Vodafone South Pacific Region, he has led the brand
transformation of the multi-telecom acquisition spree to Vodafone and launched its global brand
repositioning “Together we can”
A creative enthusiast & an art lover who is ever ready for adventures in professional as well as personal
space and has over 16 years of experience building brands across various industries in India, Asia, New
Zealand, Australia, Fiji and other Pacific Island countries. With his instinctive flair for Brands, he intuitively
understands the exponential power of brands in creating business value.
Starting his career with JWT, he has worked across multiple facets of marketing, establishing himself as a
leading marketer who is both a dreamer & a doer. He holds rich experience in developing several industry
firsts, multi-award-winning campaigns, and leading integrated brand marketing initiatives. He has also
worked for the likes of L’Oreal and Vodafone India across diverse categories such as Professional Beauty
Products, Colour Cosmetics, and Telecom.
In 2018, Jayesh was bestowed with a mandate to strengthen Vodafone’s brand presence and digital
proposition and to build a poignant relationship with the ever-evolving customer base across the South
Pacific Region.
Prior to this role, Jayesh was GM- Brand Communications for Vodafone Pan-India, helping the launch of
SuperNet 4G- one of the biggest 360-degree launches across categories & upgrading a base of 15M+ to 4G
and also led several circle specific campaigns & brand love initiatives across 23 markets in India, getting his
work recognition at respected advertising forums like Kyoorios, Abby’s, Graham Bell Awards etc.
In the first 10 years of his career, Jayesh built a strong foundation in the Beauty / FMCG industry with most
of his business and management experience forged at L’Oreal India. Over 10 years at L’Oreal, Jayesh worked
across marketing roles, with rich exposure transcending varied categories & leading brands.
Jayesh is actively involved in the Brand & Marketing network in India & abroad. He was on the Fulton
Adventist University’s (Australia) Curriculum Advisory Committee and a core member of the Global Brand
Guardian Community of Vodafone UK, select industry associations and organizations. Jayesh is also an avid
speaker at various prestigious forums & a regular at Marketing Jury Panels.
Jayesh is an alumnus of NMIMS, Mumbai & holds a Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) and an MBA degree in
Marketing.
Key highlights in his stint included robust gain in market share, steady increase in NPS and Brand
Consideration metrics, rise in Customer Base (200 Mln plus) by establishing the Vodafone Supernet 4G
network campaigns / leading national network campaigns/launch of segmented propositions and
strengthening Vodafone India’s digital presence by leading several industry firsts such as FB vertical videos,
1st telecom to do a paid promotion on Instagram ( #MyBestRed), 1st Telecom to introduce Neuromarketing
mechanics in campaigns jointly with Nielsen, 1st telecom to run a bumper ad on YT , World’s Largest Family
Selfie Contest on FB etc. These efforts have delivered strong business outcomes, clear leadership on brand
parameters for Vodafone, increase in Brand Love metrics. Correspondingly, Jayesh played an integral role
in helping the brand accomplish recognition in multiple national & international fora. Key accolades
included Gold Effies (2016-17-18 & 2019), IAA Awards (2017 and 2018), Client of The Year – Emvies 2017
and 2018 & Guinness Book of World Records for #TogetherForever Online/Offline activation (2020
accreditation awaited).
Manish Saksena Lead, Aadyam Handwoven & Advisor: Tommy Hilfiger/Calvin Klein/Arrow Ex Co Founder LimeRoad.com A lifestyle specialist with 26 years of experience in design, product, management, marketing, store design, visual merchandising and backend in Retail industry. As varied as being a part of the entry of International Brands to creating successful homegrown brands, Manish brings with him a wealth of core consumer experience. From leading the growth, expansion and profitability of the iconic brand Tommy Hilfiger in India as COO for its India operations, he made his foray into the ecommerce environment with LimeRoad.com & Amazon while pursuing his passion to engage with weavers in different craft clusters to create sarees. Today he enjoys in his role as a consultant, the nuances and excellences of Brick & Mortar retail with Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein at one end and leading the CSR initiative for the Weavers of Pochampally , Benaras & Bhuj under the aegis of Aditya Birla Group . He is actively involved with various craft bodies such as Crafts Council of India / Under the Mango Tree & Craft Catapult: Startup Oasis IIMA. With strong roots in St. Stephens College, New Delhi and London School of Fashion, he has worked in different genres and scopes with Madura Garments as Creative Director, with Landmark Group as Head of Buying and successfully launched the first organized ethnic wear brand W.
Mayank Mohan Agarwal returned to India in 2007, after pursuing his higher education in the US and working as a strategy consultant with Deloitte for several years. On his return, he decided to join his family business, Mohanlal Sons. He used his strategy consulting background and a keen foresight to reinvent the business from a Multi Brand Outlet to a Specialized Celebration Wear Retailer. He also decided to foray into tier II and III towns, where the real India growth story resides. Mohanlal Sons is now spread across 20 different cities in North India. All their stores are Company Owned & Operated.
Ranjan Sharma has been working with Bestseller India since August 2012 as CIO and Head of Supply Chain and has over 26 years of experience. He started his career in June 1996 with Futurecom as Product Manager and was responsible for handling sales of IT Infrastructure to Corporate Houses of Brands like IBM, Compaq and HCL. He was also responsible for developing a team for sales and support. After having worked for about 5 years, in July 2001 he moved to Vishal Retail Ltd. as Store Manager and went on to become Zonal Operation head and subsequently Head of IT. Here he was responsible for setting up long term IT and Supply chain strategy. In his last stint before joining Bestseller, he was working with Future Group. Here he has worked at various profiles like Head of SAP Practise, Head of Packaged applications and Head of IT and was responsible for – Building SAP Retail team. He also worked on whole bunch of strategic and tactical initiatives. He worked extensively on warehouse automation to achieve higher efficiency Academically, he’s an alumni from American International University of Management & Technology and IIM Kozhikode
Having more than 2.5 decades of experience in the Textile/ Apparel Sector working across diverse domains of Sustainability, Manufacturing, Innovation, Product Development and Projects
Previously been heading all the Arvind Ltd’s Garment Processing facilities and Established Factories in India and Ethiopia from Project planning, Plant layout, Machine selection, Project execution and setting the operations.
Currently heading Sustainability and Traceability for the entire Garment Business of Arvind Ltd, Including Environment Management System, Sustainable Innovations, Testing Lab, Circularity, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Water Stewardship, Zero Blue Water, Sustainable Chemistry and Supply chain & Product Traceability.
