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Haleon names Kedar Lele president for India Subcontinent
MUMBAI: Haleon has handed the reins of its India Subcontinent business to Kedar Lele, appointing him president with effect from January 2026. The move signals a sharpened focus on growth, leadership depth and closer alignment with the company’s global ambitions.
Lele will also join the Haleon executive team, bringing India firmly into the heart of the company’s “Win as One” strategy. He succeeds Navneet Saluja, who retired in October 2025 after steering the business through a period of consolidation and transition.
With more than 25 years of experience spanning FMCG, advertising, digital innovation and automotive sectors, Lele arrives with a résumé that blends scale with strategy. He joins Haleon from Castrol India Ltd, where he served as managing director. Prior to that, he spent two decades at Hindustan Unilever Ltd, holding several senior leadership roles, including executive director for sales and customer development in South Asia and chairman and managing director of Unilever Bangladesh.
An alumnus of the Indian School of Business, where he earned an MBA in strategic marketing and operations, Lele also holds a postgraduate diploma in marketing communications from Mica. Beyond corporate leadership, he serves on the board of TVS Automobile Solutions and has previously been vice president of the Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Bangladesh.
As president for the India Subcontinent, Lele will play a central role in driving Haleon’s ambition to reach one billion more consumers globally by 2030. He will also advance the company’s purpose of delivering better everyday health with humanity, with India positioned as a key growth engine in that journey.
Haleon India, formerly GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, operates across oral care, digestive health, pain management, respiratory care and vitamin and mineral supplements. Its portfolio includes household names such as Sensodyne, Eno, Crocin, Iodex, Otrivin, Centrum, Ostocalcium, Parodontax and Polident.
With Lele at the helm, Haleon appears set to blend consumer insight with execution muscle, aiming to make everyday health a little more accessible, and a lot more human.
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YES Bank hands the keys to SBI veteran Vinay Tonse as it bets on a new era
Former SBI managing director appointed as YES Bank’s new MD and CEO
MUMBAI: YES Bank is done rebuilding. Now it wants to grow. The private sector lender has appointed Vinay Muralidhar Tonse as managing director and chief executive officer-designate, with RBI approval secured and a start date of April 6, 2026 confirmed. The three-year term signals the bank’s intent to shift gears from crisis recovery to full-throttle expansion.
Tonse, 60, is no stranger to scale. Most recently managing director at State Bank of India, he oversaw a retail book of roughly $800bn in deposits and advances, one of the largest in the country. Before that, he ran SBI Mutual Fund from August 2020 to December 2022, a stint that saw assets under management surge from Rs 4.32 lakh crore to Rs 7.32 lakh crore across market cycles. Add stints in Singapore and four years leading SBI’s overseas operations in Osaka, and the incoming chief arrives with a genuinely global CV.
His academic grounding is equally solid: a commerce degree from St Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bengaluru, and a master’s in commerce from Bangalore University.
The appointment follows an extensive search and evaluation process by the bank’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee. NRC chairperson Nandita Gurjar said the committee unanimously backed Tonse, citing his leadership track record, governance credentials and ability to drive the bank’s next phase of transformation.
Non-executive chairman Rama Subramaniam Gandhi was unequivocal. “I am certain that Vinay Tonse, with his vast experience as a senior banker, will propel YES Bank to its next phase of growth,” Gandhi said, adding that the bank remains focused on strengthening its retail and corporate banking franchises and expanding its branch network.
Rajeev Kannan, non-executive director and senior executive at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, the bank’s largest shareholder, said Tonse’s experience across retail, corporate banking, global markets and asset management positioned him well to lead the lender. SMBC said it looks forward to working with Tonse and the board as YES Bank pursues its ambition of becoming a top-tier private sector lender anchored in strong governance and sustainable growth.
Tonse succeeds Prashant Kumar, who took the helm in March 2020 when YES Bank was in freefall following a severe financial crisis, and spent six years painstakingly stabilising the institution, rebuilding governance and restoring operational scale. Gandhi was generous: “The bank remains indebted to Prashant Kumar, who is responsible for much of what a strong financial powerhouse YES Bank is today.”
Tonse, for his part, struck a purposeful note. “Together with the board and my colleagues, I remain deeply committed to creating long-term value for all our stakeholders,” he said, pledging to build on Kumar’s foundation guided by his personal motto: Make A Difference.
Beyond the balance sheet, Tonse played cricket at college and club level and represented Karnataka in archery at the national championships — sports he credits with teaching him teamwork, situational leadership, discipline and focus. In quieter moments, he reaches for retro Kannada music, classic Hindi songs, and the crooning of Engelbert Humperdinck, Mukesh and Kishore Kumar.
YES Bank has its steady-handed rebuilder in Kumar to thank for survival. Now it has a scale-obsessed growth banker at the wheel. The next chapter starts April 6.
