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Britannia plays musical chairs with its top brass
BENGALURU: Biscuit maker shuffles dairy leadership as it looks to cream off more profits
Britannia Industries is stirring the pot. The Mumbai-listed biscuit behemoth announced on 15 December that it’s reshuffling its senior management, moving Abhishek Sinha from chief business officer for dairy to the newly minted role of chief sales transformation officer.
Stepping into Sinha’s still-warm dairy seat is Subhashis Basu, a veteran with three decades of experience churning through the fast-moving consumer goods and dairy sectors. Basu previously served as chief executive of Anik Milk Products and chief commercial director at Lactalis India, where he successfully merged three entities and delivered growth in choppy market conditions.
Sinha, who has been buttering up Britannia’s fortunes since 2005, spent over five years building the company’s dairy business. He helped forge a joint venture with France’s Bel SA and set up Britannia’s manufacturing unit in Ranjangaon, Maharashtra. His two decades in the industry span everything from area sales manager to running the western region.
Basu brings pedigree: he steered Prataap Snacks to a successful IPO, drove growth at Mother Dairy, and held key roles at PepsiCo and Parle Products. From launching Quaker Oats in India to managing mergers, he’s proved adept at transforming businesses.
Both appointments took effect immediately, approved by the board via circular resolution at 6:03pm on Sunday. For a company that’s been on a tear in recent years, the moves suggest Britannia is hungry for more. Whether Basu can make the dairy division rise remains to be seen
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UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
