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KFC and Pizza Hut operator appoints Manish Dawar as CEO
GURUGRAM: Devyani International, the operator of KFC and Pizza Hut in India, has picked Manish Dawar as its next chief executive, handing the keys to its finance head at a testing moment for the business.
Dawar, cfo since 2021, will take charge from April 1, replacing Viraj Joshi, who shifts to a non-executive director role. The move keeps the succession in-house and signals a preference for financial discipline over flashy expansion.
The finance seat will not stay empty for long. Anupam Kumar, currently executive vice president – finance, is set to become cfo, completing a tightly managed shuffle at the top.
The backdrop is less than cosy. The company recently posted a sharp rise in quarterly losses, underlining pressure on margins in India’s crowded quick-service restaurant market, where discounting and delivery costs gnaw at profits.
At the same time, Devyani is swinging big on scale, announcing a $934m merger with Sapphire Foods, another major franchisee in the sector. The deal aims to bulk up store count, boost bargaining power and squeeze efficiencies from procurement to logistics.
Investors will be watching whether a numbers man in the corner office can steady earnings while digesting a large merger. In India’s fast-food wars, growth is easy to order; profits are harder to serve.
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MakeMyTrip partners with OpenAI to boost AI-powered travel planning
Conversational AI now guides travellers from inspiration straight to booking
GURUGRAM: MakeMyTrip, India’s leading online travel company, has teamed up with OpenAI to bring a fresh twist to AI-driven travel planning. The collaboration integrates OpenAI’s APIs into MakeMyTrip’s app, making it easier than ever for travellers to move from chatting about dream trips to booking them.
The move centres around MakeMyTrip’s Myra interface, a GenAI trip planning assistant that now handles over 50,000 conversations a day in languages ranging from English and Hindi to Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Myra helps travellers explore options, create itineraries and book flights, hotels and extras without the usual hassle of searching and filtering.
MakeMyTrip co-founder and group CEO Rajesh Magow said, “With OpenAI, we turn curiosity into confident decisions. When travellers start their journey through conversation, MakeMyTrip becomes a seamless extension of that discovery process. AI combined with our travel data makes it possible to deliver personalised, bookable options at scale.”
OpenAI managing director- international Oliver Jay added, “MakeMyTrip is showing how AI can make travel planning feel more like a conversation than a chore. Advanced AI isn’t just about back-end efficiencies, it’s about transforming the way travellers experience and engage with the platform.”
MakeMyTrip has long invested in AI across the travel lifecycle, from inspiration and discovery to booking and post-sales support. Nearly half of Myra’s queries now come from tier-2 and smaller cities, and voice interactions are booming outside metros, making AI travel assistance more accessible than ever.
With this partnership, MakeMyTrip is not just keeping up with AI trends, it’s aiming to lead the way, turning every traveller’s whim into a smooth, bookable adventure.
