Brands
Sneha Jha promoted to associate director at KFC India
Marketing leader to steer media strategy and customer lifecycle growth
MUMBAI: Sneha Jha has been promoted to associate director – media and customer lifecycle management at KFC India, marking the latest milestone in her nearly decade-long journey with the quick-service restaurant brand.
In her expanded role, Jha will oversee the company’s media strategy while leading initiatives across the customer lifecycle, with a focus on strengthening acquisition, engagement and retention across multiple channels.
Her promotion follows her tenure as head of media and customer lifecycle management, a role she held from August 2024 to January 2026. During this time, she led media planning and buying, while shaping customer lifecycle strategies that supported the brand’s digital and marketing ambitions.
Jha’s rise within KFC India has been steady and wide-ranging. Since joining the company in 2016 as deputy brand manager for consumer insights, she has moved through a series of leadership roles spanning innovation, delivery strategy, e-commerce and lifecycle marketing.
Over the years, she has served as brand manager for innovation and insights, senior brand manager handling delivery and aggregator partnerships, and later as senior brand manager for customer lifecycle management and e-commerce. She went on to lead customer lifecycle management and owned e-commerce before taking charge of media and lifecycle functions at the head level.
Before entering the quick-service restaurant industry, Jha spent over three years at IMRB International as a senior research manager. There, she led quantitative research programmes for major brands including PepsiCo, Frito, GSK, Philips and Maruti.
With experience spanning consumer insights, digital marketing, media strategy and martech, Jha’s elevation signals KFC India’s continued focus on strengthening its marketing engine while deepening customer relationships in an increasingly digital-first landscape.
Brands
AI becomes key tool for Indian travellers, Agoda report finds
68 per cent plan to use AI for trips as 33 per cent already rely on it.
MUMBAI: Holiday planning is getting a software upgrade less “Where should we go?” and more “What does the algorithm say?” Indian travellers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to map their journeys, with new data from Agoda’s 2026 Travel Outlook Report suggesting that AI is fast becoming central to how trips are imagined, planned and booked.
While 33 per cent of respondents said they already use AI tools for travel planning, a far larger 68 per cent indicated they are likely to rely on it for their next trip pointing to a sharp acceleration in adoption in a market already comfortable with digital-first travel.
What travellers want from AI, however, goes well beyond basic search. The report shows 38 per cent are looking for recommendations on local attractions and activities, while 37 per cent expect personalised itineraries. Destination discovery remains a key use case at 29 per cent, with dining suggestions (23 per cent) and budget management (22 per cent) also emerging as practical applications.
The shift reflects a broader change in expectations AI is no longer a novelty but a planning companion expected to work across every stage of the journey, from inspiration to execution.
Trust levels appear to be keeping pace. Nearly 88 per cent of respondents said they either trust or feel neutral about AI-generated recommendations, including 53 per cent who expressed clear confidence. This builds on earlier trends, with Agoda’s 2025 survey showing nine in ten Indian travellers already using apps to book travel suggesting AI adoption is more evolution than disruption.
The company has been testing this appetite through initiatives such as its 2025 AI-powered Vacation Planner campaign, which generated customised itineraries and visuals based on user inputs, delivered with a layer of celebrity-led engagement.
For platforms like Agoda, which aggregates more than 6 million properties, over 130,000 flight routes and 300,000 travel activities, AI offers a way to navigate scale without overwhelming users turning abundance into relevance.
As AI continues to embed itself into everyday decision-making, India is emerging as a market where travel planning is not just going digital, but decisively intelligent.
