Brands
Hemant Rupani to head Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages as CEO
BENGALURU: Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), India’s largest Coca-Cola bottler, has named Hemant Rupani as its new chief executive, effective 8 September. Rupani takes over from Juan Pablo Rodriguez, who is moving on to a new role within the global Coca-Cola system.
Rupani, a seasoned operator with stints across FMCG, telecom, and tech, currently serves as Mondelez’s business unit president for southeast Asia, overseeing operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. He joined Mondelez in 2016 and has held leadership roles in India and Vietnam, rising to his current post in 2022.
The appointment comes at a pivotal time for HCCB, following Coca-Cola’s move in December 2024 to sell a 40 per cent stake in Hindustan Coca-Cola Holdings Pvt Ltd—the parent company of HCCB—to the Jubilant Bhartia group.
A mechanical engineering graduate from Regional Engineering College, Jaipur, with an MBA in marketing from FMS Delhi, Rupani began his career in 1997 at ICI India. He has since worked with PepsiCo, Infosys, Vodafone, and Britannia, steadily climbing the leadership ladder across sectors.
He will report to the HCCB board and is expected to steer the company’s next phase of growth, amid rising investment in India and intensifying competition in the beverage market.
The Coca-Cola Co, listed on NYSE as KO, operates in over 200 markets and employs more than 700,000 people through its global bottling partners.
Brands
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.
