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.