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
Lululemon picks former Nike executive to be its next chief
Heidi O’Neill, who helped grow Nike into a $45 billion giant, will take the top job in September
CANADA: Lululemon has found its next chief executive, and she comes with serious credentials. The athleisure giant named Heidi O’Neill as its new CEO on Wednesday, ending a search that has left the company running on interim leadership since earlier this year. O’Neill will take charge on September 8, 2026, based out of Vancouver, and will join the board on the same day.
O’Neill brings more than three decades of experience across performance apparel, footwear and sport. The bulk of that time was spent at Nike, where she was a central figure in one of corporate sport’s great growth stories, helping take the company from a $9 billion business to a $45 billion global powerhouse. She oversaw product pipelines, brand strategy and consumer connections, and played a significant role in shaping how Nike spoke to athletes around the world. Earlier in her career, she worked in marketing for the Dockers brand at Levi Strauss. She also brings boardroom experience from Spotify Technology, Hyatt Hotels and Lithia and Driveway.
The board was unequivocal in its enthusiasm. “We selected Heidi because of the breadth of her experience, her demonstrated success delivering breakthrough ideas and initiatives at scale, and her ability to be a knowledgeable change and growth agent,” said Marti Morfitt, executive chair of Lululemon’s board.
O’Neill, for her part, was bullish. “Lululemon is an iconic brand with something rare: genuine guest love, a product ethos rooted in innovation, and a global platform still in the early stages of its potential,” she said. “My job will be to accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance, and unlock growth in markets around the world.”
Until she arrives, Meghan Frank and André Maestrini will continue as interim co-CEOs, before returning to their previous senior leadership roles once O’Neill steps in.
Lululemon is betting that a Nike veteran who helped build one of the world’s most powerful sports brands can do something similar for an athleisure label that has genuine love from its customers but is still chasing its full global potential. O’Neill has done it before at scale. The question now is whether she can do it again.
