Hari Hara Sudhan Sridhar takes charge of brand and marcomm at Nippon Paint India

CHENNAI: Few marketers can say they have sold personal loans, a radio station, burgers, Audis and paint. Hari Hara Sudhan Sridhar can. He has been named group lead, brand and marcomm, India Group, at Nippon Paint India, a post that puts him in charge of how the company looks, sounds and speaks across its businesses in the country.

Sridhar says he is happy to share the news. He thanked Sharad Malhotra and Mark Titus for entrusting him with the responsibility.

The brief

The new role is broad. Sridhar leads brand architecture and strategy, above-the-line (ATL) and brand communications, digital marketing for the brand, colour marketing, cross-business-unit brand projects and brand governance for the India Group. That is the whole brand machine, from the big idea to the rules that keep every business unit saying the same thing.

He comes to it from inside. Since June 2022 he has been head of marketing communication at Nippon Paint India, leading the marcomm team of the decorative paints division. That mandate covered brand, media, digital, trade marketing, loyalty programmes and the painter ecosystem. Paint is a trade where the person who applies it often shapes what the buyer picks, so a brief that includes painters, shops and loyalty schemes is a wide one.

A career across nine employers

Sridhar describes himself as a marketing professional passionate about brand building, with extensive experience across industries and markets. His knowledge of contemporary marketing techniques includes digital marketing and niche and luxury marketing. His CV shows how he got there.

He began in 2006 as a sales manager at ICICI Bank, selling personal loans in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka and managing a sales force of more than 250 executives through direct and partner channels.

From 2007 to 2010 he was marketing manager at Radio Mirchi, handling Bangalore, Mangalore and Trivandrum. He worked to build top-of-mind recall for the brand and kept Radio Mirchi the number one station in Bengaluru, as measured by Radio Audience Measurement. A brand activation he conceptualised and ran earned a mention in the Limca Book of Records.

In 2010 he spent ten months as regional manager, marketing, south, at McDonald’s India, handling trade marketing for more than 45 stores across south India. He identified problems at individual stores and offered marketing fixes.

At Hungama, from December 2010 to October 2011, he was manager, media sales (south). He offered digital marketing solutions to consumer brands and ran the first digital-only launch of a brand.

From 2011 to 2014 he was brand manager at ING Vysya Bank in Bangalore. He worked with product teams on offerings such as personalised cards and flexible fixed deposits, built customer communication from market research, worked with advertising and media agencies and production houses, and set up the digital asset management system for creatives and collaterals.

Then came cars. From November 2014 to December 2017 he was assistant general manager, marketing, at Audi Chennai and Karnataka, handling end-to-end trade marketing: brand activation, lead generation, tele-marketing, product launches, and marketing analytics and research. He learnt the nuances of luxury marketing, used Salesforce to judge how well campaigns worked, and set up and automated digital tools such as email campaigns and social media marketing.

At Royal Enfield, from December 2017 to May 2020, he was national marketing manager. His brief was to raise service market share, build retail solutions for alternate soft products as independent business lines, lift new motorcycle sales through brand activations, and work with internal teams, agencies and partners.

From May 2020 to July 2022 he was head, brand, media and digital strategy at Butterfly Kitchen Appliances in Chennai. He managed brand and media for 300 products across 13 categories in consumer durables, built the brand’s new e-commerce platform, and introduced geography-based and product-based promotions across all categories.

Why it fits

Look at the pattern. A bank, a radio station, a burger chain, a digital media house, a luxury carmaker, a motorcycle maker, an appliance brand and now a paint company. Each asks a different question of a marketer: how to win over a customer who is borrowing, listening, eating, driving or decorating. The answers have a common core in brand, media, digital and the trade.

That mix suits a role about brand governance and architecture. A person who has seen how brands behave in many markets is well placed to decide how a group’s brands should fit together. His four years at Nippon Paint India give him the insider’s knowledge as well.

For Nippon Paint India, the promotion keeps a familiar leader in charge of the brand. For Sridhar, it widens a job he already knows well, from the decorative paints division to the whole India Group.