MAM
Coca-Cola India announces top level organisational changes
MUMBAI: Coca-Cola India has announced some key senior leadership changes, aligned with its long term plans of becoming one of the Coca-Cola company’s top five markets (in volume terms) by 2020. The Company is already committed to an investment of $ five billion to further capture growth opportunities in the Indian packaged beverage market.
Announcing the senior leadership changes, deputy business unit president, India and South West Asia Venkatesh Kini said, “As we move into the next phase of our journey in India, we have a solid foundation and the necessary momentum in our business. We now need to have the scale and resources to capture latent growth. Building our talent pipeline and developing people capability is one of our key pillars for success. The new senior level management changes is a step in that direction. The entire team will work closely with our bottling partners to achieve our Vision 2020 goals in India.”
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The following are the key organisational changes effective 1 October, 2013. All these senior leaders of the company will report to Kini. There are no changes in the organisational structure at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, led by its CEO T. Krishnakumar.
Vikas Chawla, currently VP operations, is moving to Athens, taking over as the franchise operations head in South East Europe where he will lead operations for 12 European countries. This is yet another endorsement of the quality of talent in India. He adds to the list of 47 managers that the BU has exported to the global TCCC system.
For a deeper focus on operations and aligned to achieving the business targets for 2020, Coca-Cola India will have two operation leaders going forward.
Sumanta Datta, currently VP – customer and commercial leadership, will take over as vice president, Company Bottling Operations (including Delhi region and national key accounts). He will work closelywith the team at Hindustan Coca-Cola to deliver the volume and profitability targets for Coca-Cola India. Datta has been with the Coca-Cola system since 1995 in a variety of roles in marketing, operations, customer & commercial leadership, strategy in India as well as China. In his most recent role he has helped drive exponential growth in the national key accounts business.
Bhupendra Suri, currently director, franchise operations, is being elevated as vice president – Franchise Bottling Operations. He will work with the 11 franchise bottlers in India and provide leadership and strategic direction to them. Suri has spent 17 years in India in a variety of functional and general management roles, with the company as well as the bottling operations.
Andriy Avramenko, currently VP – juice, will take over as vice president strategy and still beverages. Avramenko has had diverse experiences within Coca-Cola in strategy, mergers and acquisitions, business integration, supply chain and finance. Avramenko has been instrumental in putting the juice brands on a path of sustainable profitable growth in India and SWA over the past two years.
Debabrata Mukherjee, currently vice president, strategy and still beverages, will take on the role of vice president, marketing and commercial. The marketing and commercial roles are being brought together under one head, for a deeper and combined focus on commercial and shopper marketing as well as product commercialisation.
Mukherjee is a veteran of the Coca-Cola system, who joined the company in 1998. He has done a series of marketing and general management roles. He was the head of marketing for the company in Korea before coming back to India in 2011.
Anupama Ahluwalia, currently VP marketing, will take up a short term leadership assignment with Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages to get direct experience within our bottling system. Upon completion of the assignment, Ahluwalia will then return to Coca-Cola India. He has led the marketing function for over two years, leading the creation of the iconic crazy for happiness campaign for Coca-Cola, achieved record market shares for the brand and led the company into the forefront of digital marketing by launching the social media center.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
