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“My focus is to build large consumer centricity in the Raymond portfolio,” says Sunil Kataria, who took over last week as the CEO of the Lifestyle Business of the textile giant, which apart from the 97-year old iconic brand, also owns Color Plus and Park Avenue, among others.
As he points out, there has been an evolution in consumer preferences in styling. His focus, he says, would be to get the full measure of this changing consumer.
Kataria comes to Raymond from Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) where as CEO, he led business operations for India and South East Asia. I have had “four accelerator experiences” in my career, says Kataria. The first was at Marico, where he spent 13 years getting groomed in corporate functions; Subhiksha where he got a feel for retail and the start-up experience; Idea Cellular which was a case of an exciting turnaround and then Godrej where he was in the thick of integration (between GCPL and erstwhile Godrej Sara Lee) and subsequent scale up into a future-ready organisation.
Isn’t it a challenging time to be a CEO, what with the Russia-Ukraine war and the pressures on the commodity market, which will be felt in the textiles business? “In my last eight years as CEO, I have seen demonetisation, GST, economic slowdown, two years of Covid waves, and now a global super inflation phase,” retorts Kataria, saying all leaders have to deal with a hyper-VUCA world.
The 53-year old who grew up in Delhi , has made Bombay his home for the last two decades – except for a short stint with Idea in the north – and says he is now looking forward to his fifth transformative experience at Raymond.
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