Brands
Honasa Consumer onboards Pratik Mukherjee as vice president of Brand Factory
Mumbai: Fast growing house of brands for personal care and parent company of Mamaearth, The Derma Co., Ayuga, & Aqualogica, Honasa Consumer (HCPL) has appointed Pratik Mukherjee as vice president, Brand Factory, where he will be responsible for crafting, launching, and building new brands business for Honasa. Mukherjee will be based out of the Honasa Consumer head office in Gurgaon.
With over a decade of experience, Mukherjee has been a part of prestigious brands like P&G, Gillette, and Urban Company. He began his professional career with Tata Consultancy Group before moving on to IIM-Ahmedabad to complete his master’s degree. Thereafter, he joined Procter & Gamble, where he worked on the Gillette brand and oversaw brand launches and campaigns, earning him awards. He served as the head of Procter & Gamble’s DTC business for India and South Asia.
Later, he joined Urban Company as the marketing head for beauty, grooming & cleaning verticals. As the head of marketing at Infra.Market (a construction unicorn), A Cannes awardee, Mukherjee has been acknowledged with various other awards like the Asia President’s Award and Global President Awards.
Speaking on his role, Pratik Mukherjee said, “I am honoured and excited to join Honasa and contribute towards the journey to build a house of consumer-loved brands leveraging the digital-first D2C playbook. Honasa Consumer’s brands have created tremendous displacement, capturing sizable market share and garnering consumer trust in a very short period. I look forward to joining this trailblazing team and contributing to the next wave of growth for the company.”
Honasa Consumer co-founder and CEO Varun Alagh said, “Honasa has emerged as the fastest growing D2C brand and being a digital-first brand, it is critical to constantly innovate and stay ahead of competition in this extremely dynamic digital ecosystem.”
“Pratik has extensive experience of building millennial brands, and he will elevate and support us as we plan to implement efficient strategies to launch new brands and take the businesses to the next level with his knowledge and expertise. We are thrilled to have him on board as we expand the company,” he further said.
Brands
Uber launches hotel bookings feature in partnership with Expedia
From hotel bookings to room service at your door, the ride-hailing giant is making its boldest push yet into everyday life
CALIFORNIA: Uber is done being just a taxi app. At its annual GO-GET product event, the world’s leading mobility and delivery platform unveiled a sweeping set of new features designed to plant itself at the centre of how people travel, eat and shop, hotel bookings included.
The headline move is a partnership with Expedia Group that lets Uber users in the United States book hotels directly within the Uber app, with access to a catalogue that will eventually grow to more than 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members get 10 per cent back in Uber One credits on all hotel bookings and savings of at least 20 per cent on a rolling list of more than 10,000 hotels globally. Vacation rentals from Vrbo, Expedia Group’s home-rental brand, will be added later this year. The partnership is expected to expand beyond the United States. From June, Uber rides will also be integrated directly into the Expedia app, with push notifications sent to travellers ahead of hotel check-in to book discounted Uber rides for the duration of their stay.
Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber, framed the expansion in terms of the modern condition. “Uber is becoming an app for everything, helping people go, get, and now travel all in one place,” he said. “We’re all living through a moment of real cognitive overload: too many apps, too many decisions, too much noise. At the end of the day, our job is to help people reclaim their time, spending less of it managing the logistics of life and more of it actually living.”
Ariane Gorin, chief executive of Expedia Group, struck a similarly ambitious note. “Travel should feel effortless, and this partnership gets us one step closer to offering a seamless traveller experience,” she said. “By connecting our two-sided marketplace with Uber, we’re bringing Uber rides directly into the Expedia app and Expedia Group’s lodging inventory into the Uber app through our Rapid API technology. Together, we’re helping travellers spend less time planning and more time enjoying the journey.”
Beyond hotels, the product announcements come thick and fast. Travel Mode, available within both the Uber and Uber Eats apps, offers curated recommendations on local favourites, tourist destinations, OpenTable restaurant reservations and on-demand delivery to hotel rooms. Uber One International means the membership programme now works globally, allowing members to earn credits on rides abroad that can be redeemed once back home. A new Shop for Me feature lets users request items from any store, even those not listed on the app. Eats for the Way allows riders in select cities booking an Uber Black or Uber Black SUV to have a drink or snack waiting for them in the car. Voice Bookings, powered by artificial intelligence, lets users book a ride conversationally, without touching their phone. And a redesigned One Search bar consolidates results for places, food and items across the entire Uber platform in a single query.
Uber has now logged more than 72 billion trips since it launched in 2010. The question it is now answering is what comes after the ride. The answer, apparently, is everything else. Whether users want a hotel in Paris, a coffee in the back of a car or a snake plant from the local garden centre, Uber would very much like to be the one to provide it. The app economy’s land grab has a new front-runner.
NOTE: The image used is AI generated and only for representational purposes.
