Shehnaz Gill takes over as Senior Vice President Operations for India
Coca-Cola India today announced a new organization structure in keeping with economic reforms that have the potential to convert India into a “single” national market. The new structure also enables its business to be a growth engine for The Coca-Cola Company by capitalizing on emerging opportunities like e-commerce, modern trade, new beverages and digitization, while continuing to build on its wide reach in traditional trade.
Coca-Cola India operates with 14 bottlers of The Coca-Cola Company in India, one of which is a Company owned bottling entity (Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd). The new structure is only applicable to Coca-Cola India.
Announcing the new structure, Venkatesh Kini, President, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia, said “Under the new operating structure effective January 2017, the franchise management function of Coca-Cola India has been organized for geographical synergies instead of bottling territories. Now that we have built a solid foundation for our business over the last two decades, we are ready to embrace India as one national market with common commercial metrics, marketing calendars and market execution standards. This will drive productivity, reduce duplication, leverage technology, enable digitization and capitalize on our distribution scale.”
To lead this change, Shehnaz Gill, a 12 year veteran of The Coca-Cola system will take over the newly created role of Senior Vice President Operations for India. He will serve as the Franchise Head for all the 14 bottlers operating in India and will report to Venkatesh Kini, President, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia. He re-joins the Coca-Cola India system having most recently served as Vice President and General Manager, Upstate New York and Pennsylvania for Coca-Cola Refreshments.
Shehnaz will be assisted in his operational duties by Ravinder Singh Bhatia, Region Director North; Ashish Jain, Region Director, Delhi NCR; Alka Shukla, Region Director, Uttar Pradesh; Arpita Maitra, Region Director, East; Alok Kohli, Region Director, Central and West and Vikas Sunkad, Region Director, South.
The operating structure for the Company owned bottling entity - Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd- remains intact. It will continue to operate through its five Zonal Vice Presidents and Executive Director, Operations.
The appointment of Shehnaz is in keeping with the Company’s approach of creating and leveraging a pool of global Indian talent. In 2016, Sanjeev Kumar moved from India to take the role of CFO of the newly created West Africa Business Unit, with responsibility for 31 countries. Most recently, Bhupendra Suri, erstwhile Vice President, Franchise Operations for India, was promoted to the role of General Manager and Country Head, Nigeria - one of the biggest markets for the Company in Africa and a top 20 market, globally. Bhupendra is the 60th associate of Coca-Cola India to take a global role, within the last 10 years.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION – SHEHNAZ GILL
Shehnaz Gill has a successful track record of General Management, Sales and Commercial, within and outside the Coca-Cola system.
Shehnaz joins us from Coca-Cola Refreshments, USA where he leads Upstate New York&Pennsylvania Market Unit as General Manager and Vice President.
He began his career at Coca-Cola in 2005 heading sales for Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverage’s operations in Chennai. Subsequently, Shehnaz worked closely with Bottling Investment Group leadership spanning 20 global markets to accelerate commercial initiatives across Revenue Growth Management, Route to Market, Cold Drink Equipment and Capability Building. From 2012-14, Shehnaz was Head of Marketing and Commercial Leadership for Coca-Cola East Japan, which is one of the largest Coca-Cola bottlers globally. Prior to working at Coca-Cola, Shehnaz has worked in various locations across India with Asian Paints and SIFY limited.