Brands
Rebel Foods serves Easybites a faster route to multi city growth
MUMBAI: When scaling a food brand feels like juggling flaming pans, Rebel Foods is offering a cooler, faster flame. Through its brand growth platform Rebel Launcher, the cloud kitchen major has teamed up with Easybites to help the young, fast-growing brand expand across key Indian markets.
As part of the partnership, Easybites is now live across ten Rebel Foods cloud kitchens in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The rollout is only the starter course. The brand plans to enter Chennai and add more locations over the coming months, using Rebel Launcher’s infrastructure to scale quickly without the usual operational drag.
Easybites has built early traction with a tight, delivery-friendly menu centred on fried chicken, burgers and wraps, leaning into flavour-forward comfort food designed for consistency at scale. By plugging into Rebel Launcher, the brand can enter multiple neighbourhoods in a city from day one, while using data-led insights to fine-tune performance without compromising on quality or brand identity.
Rebel Foods co-founder Ankur Sharma said the collaboration reflects the company’s ambition to create a shared growth ecosystem for food brands. He noted that Rebel Launcher is designed to help partners expand efficiently across geographies by leveraging Rebel Foods’ technology, infrastructure and operational depth.
Easybites CEO Masoud Mohamed described Rebel Launcher as a key enabler in the brand’s southern expansion. He said the platform allows Easybites to understand new markets faster and reach more consumers per city from the outset, adding that the partnership is seen as a long-term strategic alliance.
Rebel Launcher positions itself as a lower-capex, faster go-to-market alternative for restaurant brands, handling kitchens, supply chain and operations while letting partners focus on food and brand-building. The Easybites tie-up adds to a growing roster of partners already using the platform, including Natural’s Ice Cream, ITC, Taco Bell, Wow! Momo, Biryani Blues, Smoor, Parsi Dairy Farm, Daryaganj, Chaipoint and several others.
As India’s food delivery landscape grows more crowded, the Rebel Foods–Easybites partnership underlines a simple idea: in the race to scale, sometimes the smartest move is sharing the kitchen.
Brands
YES Bank hands the keys to SBI veteran Vinay Tonse as it bets on a new era
Former SBI managing director appointed as YES Bank’s new MD and CEO
MUMBAI: YES Bank is done rebuilding. Now it wants to grow. The private sector lender has appointed Vinay Muralidhar Tonse as managing director and chief executive officer-designate, with RBI approval secured and a start date of April 6, 2026 confirmed. The three-year term signals the bank’s intent to shift gears from crisis recovery to full-throttle expansion.
Tonse, 60, is no stranger to scale. Most recently managing director at State Bank of India, he oversaw a retail book of roughly $800bn in deposits and advances, one of the largest in the country. Before that, he ran SBI Mutual Fund from August 2020 to December 2022, a stint that saw assets under management surge from Rs 4.32 lakh crore to Rs 7.32 lakh crore across market cycles. Add stints in Singapore and four years leading SBI’s overseas operations in Osaka, and the incoming chief arrives with a genuinely global CV.
His academic grounding is equally solid: a commerce degree from St Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bengaluru, and a master’s in commerce from Bangalore University.
The appointment follows an extensive search and evaluation process by the bank’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee. NRC chairperson Nandita Gurjar said the committee unanimously backed Tonse, citing his leadership track record, governance credentials and ability to drive the bank’s next phase of transformation.
Non-executive chairman Rama Subramaniam Gandhi was unequivocal. “I am certain that Vinay Tonse, with his vast experience as a senior banker, will propel YES Bank to its next phase of growth,” Gandhi said, adding that the bank remains focused on strengthening its retail and corporate banking franchises and expanding its branch network.
Rajeev Kannan, non-executive director and senior executive at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, the bank’s largest shareholder, said Tonse’s experience across retail, corporate banking, global markets and asset management positioned him well to lead the lender. SMBC said it looks forward to working with Tonse and the board as YES Bank pursues its ambition of becoming a top-tier private sector lender anchored in strong governance and sustainable growth.
Tonse succeeds Prashant Kumar, who took the helm in March 2020 when YES Bank was in freefall following a severe financial crisis, and spent six years painstakingly stabilising the institution, rebuilding governance and restoring operational scale. Gandhi was generous: “The bank remains indebted to Prashant Kumar, who is responsible for much of what a strong financial powerhouse YES Bank is today.”
Tonse, for his part, struck a purposeful note. “Together with the board and my colleagues, I remain deeply committed to creating long-term value for all our stakeholders,” he said, pledging to build on Kumar’s foundation guided by his personal motto: Make A Difference.
Beyond the balance sheet, Tonse played cricket at college and club level and represented Karnataka in archery at the national championships — sports he credits with teaching him teamwork, situational leadership, discipline and focus. In quieter moments, he reaches for retro Kannada music, classic Hindi songs, and the crooning of Engelbert Humperdinck, Mukesh and Kishore Kumar.
YES Bank has its steady-handed rebuilder in Kumar to thank for survival. Now it has a scale-obsessed growth banker at the wheel. The next chapter starts April 6.
