Future Group ropes in Grey India’s Jishnu Sen amid rejig

India's largest brick-and-mortar retailer Future Group has reassigned roles of its top executives and roped in a new marketing head to push critical businesses, especially consumer and supply chain, as part of a strategy to more than treble its revenues to Rs75,000-1,00,000 crore by 2021.

Under the new structure, Devendra Chawla, president for its food and fast moving consumer goods business, will be made the chief executive of Future Consumer while P V Seshadri, chief operating officer of its logistics business, will be elevated as Future Supply Chain's chief executive officer.

Grey India's ex-chief executive Jishnu Sen has been roped in as head of marketing for Future Retail and will report to Sadashiv Nayak, chief executive, Big Bazaar.

"We started this process with vertical advisor in the form of Milind Sarwate. We are looking at a growth of nearly 100 per cent. There are more appointments coming on the consumer business side," said Kishore Biyani, group chief executive, Future Group.

Chawla, a Harvard graduate, has worked with Asian Paints and Coca-Cola before joining Future Group in early 2009 to develop private brands that now contribute a significant chunk to overall business.

FCL, Future Group's consumer packaged goods unit, plans to launch a new brand, category or product every two weeks to have its own labels account for 70 per cent of the products sold in group retail chains such as Big Bazaar and Easyday and has been taking them outside of their own outlets too.

Jishnu has more than 25 years of experience across sectors and has built strategies for brands such as Pepsi, Britannia, Ferrero and Colgate-Palmolive.

In a mail sent to Future Group employees on Saturday, Biyani said Future Supply Chain would play an important role in helping their business achieve the group's vision 2021. Seshadri has been with Future Group for more than a decade and earlier worked with Grasim Industries, Bombay Dyeing, Welspun and Lloyds Steel earlier.

The company has opened a distribution centre in West Bengal and is investing Rs80 crore to set up a sorting unit in Nagpur which can manage up to 30 core garments.

Future Consumer, which sells 27 brands under 65 categories, recently entered into a joint venture with Hain Celestial to manufacture and sell food products in the health and wellness space in India.

The firm also has an equal joint venture with Mibelle AG, a division of the Migros Group, Switzerland, and makes a range of personal care products under the brand Swiss Tempelle. They had introduced Kosh, an oats-based brand that is produced at a manufacturing unit set up in Sri Lanka through a joint venture with SVA India Ltd.