MAM
Stanley Retail hires luxury brand veteran Abhijeet Sonar as chief executive
BENGALURU: Stanley Retail has found its growth driver. Abhijeet Sonar, who has spent nearly three decades turning around luxury brands and scaling premium businesses, takes over as chief executive of the furniture retailer, part of Stanley Lifestyles.
The hire signals intent. Stanley wants a bigger slice of India’s super-premium furniture market, and Sonar’s pedigree fits the brief. He led growth at Hansgrohe Group across India and SAARC, rescued Villeroy & Boch from the doldrums whilst expanding its showroom network, and pushed Audi’s luxury car business in Mumbai. Stints at Intercontinental Hotels and Jet Airways taught him what wealthy buyers want—and how to deliver it.
Sonar is blunt about his mandate. “My mission is to accelerate the growth of one of India’s most respected luxury brands and shape it into a world-class luxury house with global standards and ambition”.
His strategy hinges on three things: purpose, people and performance. The plan is to turn Stanley into what he calls a “future-ready luxury ecosystem”, back the teams across retail and manufacturing, and expand with an eye on the profit-and-loss account.
Sunil Suresh, founder of Stanley Lifestyles, thinks he has his man. “Abhijeet’s strategic clarity, global exposure and ability to build strong, profitable brands make him exceptionally suited to lead our next phase of growth”.
The message is clear: Stanley wants scale, but only if the margins hold. Sonar’s job is to make it happen—no excuses, no delays.
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
