Anand Bundellu joins CaratLane as head of loyalty and retention

MUMBAI: Turn customer data into revenue. Turn loyalty into an engine. That is the pitch of Anand Bundellu, who has joined CaratLane, a Tata product, as head, loyalty and retention. His brief is to lead the xCLusive Club loyalty programme and build loyalty as a revenue engine for one of India’s most loved jewellery brands.

Bundellu arrives with 21 years of experience building customer relationship management, loyalty and customer engagement ecosystems across retail, automotive and consumer businesses. His own summary is crisp: “I turn customer data into revenue, and loyalty into a business engine.” His obsession, in his words, is working out what makes customers come back.

The most visible chapter of that record is First Citizen at Shoppers Stop, India’s largest fashion retail loyalty programme. Bundellu spent five years there, first as senior general manager, CRM and loyalty, from May 2021 and then as AVP and head, CRM and loyalty, from June 2023 to July 2026. He led the customer and loyalty profit and loss account for a programme of more than 13m members that influences more than 80 per cent of brand revenue, driving retention and lifetime value growth.

The work was ambitious. Bundellu transformed First Citizen into a data-led customer growth platform, driving retention, repeat sales and hyper-personalised engagement at scale across channels. His work spanned hyper-personalisation, customer lifetime value optimisation and multi-tier architecture. He created the super-premium Black Card tier and co-branded programmes with HDFC Bank and Axis Bank, including co-branded credit cards, while scaling AI-led personalisation and gamification.

The foundation was laid earlier. Bundellu spent nearly nine years at Mahindra & Mahindra, where he led CRM, analytics and the Purple Club loyalty programme for the automotive business. He rose from manager, CRM, loyalty and analytics, in June 2012, to senior manager in August 2015 and deputy general manager in August 2019, a post he held until April 2021. Along the way he built first-party customer databases, led retention and customer advocacy programmes, built Mahindra Auto’s customer data and analytics ecosystem using predictive models to drive retention, repurchase and cross-sell, and led CRM, loyalty and lifecycle strategy using Salesforce, customer data and personalisation.

His career began in marketing. At DHL Express, from August 2007 to May 2012, Bundellu worked as assistant manager, marketing communications, covering digital, lead generation, branding and marketing communications, and then as product manager, covering product launches, development and growth, product communications above and below the line, and lifecycle management, retention and loyalty. Before that he was a senior marketing executive in international marketing at Mastek, from June 2005 to July 2007, and a summer trainee at Bharti Airtel in 2004.

Bundellu also brings a global perspective. Since March 2025, he has served as an advisory member of Euromonitor International’s Loyalty Expert Council, where he is one of a select few professionals in India. The council brings together global loyalty leaders to collaborate on personalisation, AI-driven loyalty and customer retention strategies.

Bundellu joined CaratLane in August 2026 and describes a strong start. “After five rewarding years leading First Citizen at Shoppers Stop, I’m excited to take on a new challenge: building loyalty as a revenue engine for one of India’s most loved jewellery brands,” he said. “Two months in, it’s been an exciting start: learning a new category, meeting some fantastic people and seeing first-hand the opportunity to build deeper, longer-lasting customer relationships.”

He thanked the leadership team for the warm welcome. “Looking forward to what we build together,” he said. He also invited leaders who see loyalty as a growth engine to connect and exchange ideas on what the next generation of customer retention looks like.