Prateek Kumar joins Marks and Spencer Reliance India as head of retail

MUMBAI: Prateek Kumar has a new address on the high street. Having helped turn H&M India into one of the group’s top five profitable markets, and having spent the past 22 months building stores at Zouk, he has joined Marks and Spencer Reliance India Private Limited as head of retail. It is a big brand, a big market and a big brief.

Mr Kumar, whose career spans more than 16 years across retail, fast-moving consumer durables (FMCD) and sales, is a seasoned leader and strategist in merchandising, sales, business development and operations. He announced the move himself, calling M&S “a brand with an incredible legacy, strong consumer love, and immense potential for growth in India”. He is looking forward to “bigger opportunities, new learnings, and plenty to build”.

The pedigree is hard to argue with. At H&M, where he spent more than seven years, Prateek Kumar most recently headed sales operations and merchandising, running the buying, planning and execution of the commercial plan for the market. That meant driving the topline, demand and supply planning, inventory management and overall stock management. He held complete profit and loss (P&L) responsibility and worked closely with the omni sales team. The results were sharp. India posted double-digit topline growth from 2020 and was handling a turnover of $480mn, making it one of the group’s top five profitable markets. Under his watch, the business exceeded its topline and reduction goals, significantly improving the stock-to-sales ratio and enhancing cash flow. He also drove India-specific projects such as Festive, Linen and Holi, and pushed global teams by challenging and demanding local initiatives while securing the best price levels and assortment for the market.

Expansion was the other half of the story. As expansion controller for business development, Kumar planned new business growth, budgeted sales and costs for new stores and cities, including key performance indicators (KPIs) such as return on investment (ROI) and profit levels, and managed the country portfolio, from trend analysis to the number of stores to open across a five-year horizon. He steered the country launch of two new brands, COS and H&M Home, and drove the whole expansion strategy for H&M India, including the pipeline to 2026. As area controller, he set the sales and profit budget for the entire country, managed inventory, base stock levels and maximum values with the merchandising team, and ran P&L at both store and area level. He successfully opened 15 stores in south and west India while handling an overall turnover of Rs 450 crore. In all, he has steered the successful opening of 40+ stores across India.

He has also built people. Kumar assembled a diverse and talented merchandising team that has enabled colleagues to take up global and regional roles. His stated mission is to drive growth and profitability while delivering a superior customer experience and sustainable business growth.

After H&M, he spent December 2024 to September 2026 as director of offline at Zouk, scaling the brand “brick by brick, store by store”. There he expanded the retail footprint across the country, built the offline team, set up processes and explored multiple channels of physical growth.

Earlier stints show the breadth. At Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, as area sales manager, he led the sales strategy for the lighting business in Delhi, overseeing a territory with a turnover of $3.6mn. He managed a team of 15 sales professionals and 1,500 retailers, 33 dealers and 10 distributors, adding new dealers, distributors and retailers, and delivered 20 per cent growth in sales value in a budget-challenged territory. At VIP Industries Limited, where he spent two years and one month, he began as a management trainee and rose to area retail manager. There he handled a territory worth Rs 25 crore annually, with a mix of company-run and franchise-run stores, covering manpower, stock norms, inventory, visual merchandising, sales tracking, new store openings, consumer promotions, below-the-line activities, staff recruitment and training, and sales forecasting and budgeting, with a sharp eye on KPIs such as units per transaction (UPT), average bill value (ABV) and average selling price (ASP). He began his career in quality assurance at Infosys Technologies, working on regression, automation and performance testing of a web-based application for Wells Fargo and data warehouse testing for Capital Group of Companies. He initiated the automation of a module that led to $40,000 in savings for the client.

For M&S, the arrival brings a retail operator who has scaled a global fashion giant in India, launched new brands and built stores, teams and processes from the ground up. For Prateek Kumar, it is a fresh chapter at a brand with plenty left to build. As he put it: “Here’s to new beginnings and an exciting road ahead!”