Brands
Coca-Cola reshuffles Asia power centres, elevates Sanket Ray
NEW DELHI: The Coca-Cola Company has handed Sanket Ray a sweeping new regional mandate, folding Asia’s biggest growth engines into his remit as the Atlanta group redraws its global power map.
From 31 March, Ray will add the title of emerging large markets lead to his current role as president, India and southwest Asia. The expanded brief gives him oversight of India and southwest Asia, greater China and Mongolia, and Japan and South Korea, placing some of the company’s most strategically critical markets under one command.
The shake-up comes as Henrique Braun prepares to take over as chief executive officer on 31 March, 2026, replacing James Quincey, who will stay on as executive chairman. Braun is currently executive vice-president and chief operating officer.
As part of the overhaul, Coca-Cola is carving the world into two new market groupings reporting directly to Braun, spanning Asia, Africa and the Middle East. One of these will be led by Ray, underlining the growing weight of India and its surrounding markets inside the company’s global portfolio.
The second grouping — covering Eurasia and the Middle East, Asean and the South Pacific, and Africa — will be run by Claudia Lorenzo, who also becomes president of the Eurasia and Middle East operating unit. Lorenzo is currently chief of staff to Quincey and a former president of the Asean and South Pacific operating unit.
“These changes are intended to help equip our organisation to handle the dynamic conditions we are seeing in markets around the world,” Braun said. “Sanket and Claudia bring deep regional experience and established leadership, which will be critical as we tap the immense growth potential across the markets they will lead.”
Coca-Cola is also creating a new chief digital officer role, bringing together digital, data and operational excellence. Sedef Salingan Sahin, now president of the Eurasia and Middle East operating unit, will step into the job and report to Braun.
Responsibility for digital strategy will move from president and chief financial officer John Murphy to Sahin, tightening the company’s grip on technology-led growth as it heads into its next phase.
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
