MAM
Max Fashion promotes insider as CEO
MUMBAI: Retail empires are not built by the faint-hearted. Sumit Chandna, freshly installed as chief executive of Max Fashion, knows this better than most. The 25-year veteran, promoted from deputy chief executive at Lifestyle International, has spent a career extracting profits from India’s cutthroat retail trenches.
His record is formidable. At every stop—Shoppers Stop, Hypercity, Aditya Birla Retail, Bata India and Landmark Group—Chandna has delivered the same brutal formula: fatter margins, leaner costs, higher sales. It is a skill honed across hypermarkets, department stores and specialist retail, from high fashion to groceries.
A graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Delhi, Chandna earned his stripes at Shoppers Stop, where he launched India’s first designer co-brand, Kasba, with Raghavendra Rathore. At Hypercity, he built merchandising systems from scratch and delivered results 70 per cent above plan with margins six percentage points higher than target. During an 11-year stint at Aditya Birla Retail, he rose to chief merchandising officer, pushing promotional sales from eight per cent to 23 per cent in four months and launching profitable private-label lines.
Three years at Bata India saw him juggle retail operations and merchandising before Landmark Group poached him in 2022 to run Max as deputy chief executive. Now he has the corner office.
Chandna is also a certified executive coach who has recruited talent from top business schools across India and Asia, lectured at management campuses and attended leadership programmes at Harvard and IMD in Lausanne. He won the Aditya Birla Group chairman’s award for exceptional contribution—no small feat in a conglomerate that size.
His mandate at Max is simple: keep the juggernaut rolling. In announcing his promotion, Chandna promised to lead the brand into its “next phase of growth, innovation, and impact”. Strip away the corporate speak, and it means the same thing it always has: sell more, spend less, make more.
Brands
Amazon Now to reach 100 cities with 1,000 plus centres in Rs 2,800 crore push
Rs 2,800 crore push fuels rapid delivery expansion as quick commerce heats up
NEW DELHI: Amazon India is significantly expanding its ultra-fast delivery service Amazon Now, with plans to scale operations to 100 cities across India, backed by a network of over 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres.
The move is part of a broader Rs 2,800 crore investment aimed at strengthening the company’s operations network while also enhancing safety, health and financial wellbeing programmes for thousands of associates, including fulfilment centre staff and delivery partners.
Amazon Now offers a curated selection of thousands of daily essentials, ranging from groceries such as fresh fruits, vegetables and frozen food to personal care, fashion and beauty products, small appliances, baby products, pet supplies and healthcare supplements. These are delivered within minutes, positioning the service at the centre of India’s rapidly evolving quick commerce landscape.
The expansion will take Amazon Now beyond its existing footprint in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru to a wide mix of metro and non-metro cities, including Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Meerut, Mysore, Panipat, Kochi, Amritsar, Mangalore and Vizag.
A key pillar of the initiative is its growing supply ecosystem. The company said the expansion will enable more than 16,000 farmers to directly connect with customers through sellers on the platform, using Amazon’s technology and logistics backbone to deliver fresh produce efficiently.
Explaining the momentum, Amazon India VP everyday essentials Harsh Goyal said, “Customers continue to enjoy Amazon Now, appreciating our delivery speed, value and selection, especially the quality of fresh produce sourced directly from farmers. Encouraged by this success, we have further accelerated our expansion plans and will scale Amazon Now to 100 cities, fuelled by a network of more than 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres.”
He added that the platform is designed to offer unmatched convenience, with thousands of essentials delivered in minutes, over a million items available for same-day delivery, and millions more the next day through Amazon’s wider marketplace.
At the core of Amazon Now is a network of compact, tech-enabled micro-fulfilment centres strategically located close to customer neighbourhoods. These facilities use advanced inventory systems to optimise product placement based on hyperlocal demand, enabling faster and more efficient deliveries.
With scale, speed and supply chain integration coming together, Amazon’s latest push underscores its ambition to become a dominant player in India’s quick commerce space while reshaping how everyday essentials reach consumers.
