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Piush Kothari joins Croma as chief customer experience officer
The veteran strategy executive brings a formidable digital and P&L pedigree to India’s most trusted consumer electronics retailer
MUMBAI: Croma, the Tata-backed consumer electronics chain, appointed Piush Kothari as its chief customer experience officer, the company announced this month. Kothari, who most recently served as executive vice-president and head of subscriptions and media at JioHotstar, joins with a mandate to put customers at the centre of everything Croma does, from the moment they walk into a store, physical or digital, through the entirety of the ownership experience.
“Croma has been a trusted name in consumer electronics for millions of Indians,” Kothari said on joining. “I’m looking forward to working with Shibashish and the incredible team at Croma where we want to keep raising the bar by keeping customers at the centre of what we do.”
It is a significant hire. Kothari brings nearly two decades of cross-industry experience spanning strategy, digital, and P&L roles at some of India’s most consequential organisations. At JioHotstar, where he spent a year and five months, he oversaw SVOD revenues, subscribers, and the media centre of excellence. Before that, at The Walt Disney Company, where he spent five years and seven months, he led product, growth, partnerships and international expansion for Disney+ Hotstar, scaling its subscription business across India and running standalone operations in Singapore, Canada and the United Kingdom. He also served as a nominee director on the board of Mashal Sports, the entity behind Pro Kabaddi League, where he helped clinch a five-year broadcasting and streaming media rights deal and steered the league through its post-Covid comeback season.
His earlier career is equally eclectic. At Aditya Birla Group, Kothari straddled the chairman’s office and the payments bank, where he helped launch the bank’s UPI consumer app and drove the acquisition of over a million customers in four months at industry-leading cost. Monthly UPI transaction processing crossed Rs 1 billion in just the second month of launch, a remarkable feat in 2018. Before that, stints at Accenture Strategy, Shell and Welspun rounded out a career that has taken him from oil and gas boardrooms to fintech war rooms.
Educated at IIM Calcutta and St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, Kothari is the kind of executive who has seen enough corporate theatre to know what actually moves the needle.
At Croma, the needle he needs to move is customer experience, and if his track record is anything to go by, it is in very capable hands.
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Sharon Pais appointed head of Myntra as Nandita Sinha exits Flipkart group
India’s largest fashion e-commerce platform has a new boss, and a reshuffle rippling across the group
BENGALURU: Myntra has a new leader. Sharon Pais, formerly chief business officer at Myntra and head of Flipkart Fashion, has been appointed head of Myntra effective April 13, succeeding Nandita Sinha, who is leaving the Flipkart group after nearly 13 years.
The change was confirmed in an internal memo from Kalyan Krishnamurthy, group chief executive of Flipkart. “Sharon Pais will lead Myntra and report to me, effective immediately. She has worked closely with the team over the years and understands the business well,” Krishnamurthy wrote. Sinha, who has led Myntra as chief executive since 2022, will stay on in an advisory capacity for the next few months to ensure continuity on key initiatives before her departure.
The reshuffle does not stop at Myntra. With Pais moving up, her former role heading Flipkart Fashion passes to Kapil Thirani, who until now ran the marketplace business. “Kapil Thirani will now lead Flipkart Fashion, reporting to Sakait Chaudhary. This is to ensure all our softline businesses are aligned together. We will initiate the process to identify a successor for the marketplace business,” Krishnamurthy’s note said. Thirani has been with Flipkart for over eight years.
The stakes are considerable. Bengaluru-based Myntra is India’s largest fashion e-commerce platform and one of the most profitable units within the Flipkart ecosystem, which is owned by Walmart. In FY25, Myntra posted revenue from operations of Rs 6,042.7 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 548.3 crore, comfortably ahead of rivals including Amazon Fashion, Reliance’s AJIO, Nykaa Fashion, and Meesho.
Pais inherits a business that is performing well. The question now is whether she can keep it that way in an increasingly crowded and combative market. Her record suggests she knows the terrain. The pressure to prove it starts immediately.
