Avishek Kar named director of sales and commercial at McCain Foods India

MUMBAI: McCain Foods India has promoted from within, and it has done so with a leader whose entire career reads like a masterclass in Indian retail distribution. Avishek Kar has stepped up as director, sales and commercial, taking complete revenue ownership of the consumer business across all four zones, a role that hands him P&L responsibility over four regional heads, the modern trade head and the traditional trade channel in one sweep.

The elevation is less a leap and more a natural culmination. Kar has spent nearly five years at McCain, most recently as national sales manager, retail, since October 2025, where he was already driving end to end revenue growth, market share and volume growth alongside go-to-market and sales strategy across the country. Before that, he held deputy general manager and channel head roles across modern trade and traditional trade, and led the general trade business as head from December 2021, giving him a rare vantage point across every major retail channel McCain operates in, general trade, modern trade and e-commerce alike.

What makes Kar’s appointment particularly compelling is the breadth of FMCG terrain he has covered to get here. A brief but instructive detour to Zydus Wellness in 2021 saw him lead commercial excellence, anchoring go-to-market strategy, sales technology adoption and building a sales capability framework across a multi-channel business, experience that clearly fed back into his second innings at McCain. Earlier still, he spent over four years at McCain in regional and national channel leadership roles, including a stretch heading both general trade nationally and the east region simultaneously, a dual mandate that tested his ability to balance pan-India strategy with on-ground regional execution.

Kar’s foundations were laid well before that, at United Biscuits as national sales development manager, at Perfetti Van Melle as regional trade marketing manager for the east, where he spent over four years designing trade schemes and driving point of sale visibility, and at the Nielsen Company as a client solutions executive, an early grounding in market data and analytics that has clearly stayed with him. Across two decades, the throughline is consistent, distribution, trade marketing and commercial strategy in some of India’s most demanding consumer categories, biscuits, confectionery and now frozen foods.

For McCain Foods India, promoting a leader who has already run general trade, modern trade and regional businesses within the company sends a clear signal, continuity and institutional knowledge matter more right now than an outside hire chasing a fresh playbook. Kar inherits a business at a moment when frozen foods in India are scaling fast across both traditional kirana networks and organised retail, and few leaders in the category arrive as well equipped to manage that dual complexity as he does.