Brands
“When you fulfill your promises, you build trust with your customers”: Edyta Kurek
Mumbai: Oriflame ushered in a new era under the leadership of its first female head in India, Edyta Kurek. The brand is focused on empowering the next generation by promoting both financial freedom and wellbeing.
Oriflame’s unique model empowers individuals through direct involvement, fostering micro-entrepreneurship. The brand equips its partners with the necessary skills and training to succeed, addressing social issues such as unemployment and income disparity.
At the brand’s event held at Jio Centre, Indiantelevision.com had the opportunity to speak with Oriflame’s senior vice president and head of India & Indonesia Edyta Kurek. Kurek shared valuable insights into the brand’s vision and more!
Edited excerpts
On Oriflame brand
For over sixty years, we’ve dedicated ourselves to developing our R&D facilities, ensuring that we truly understand our craft. Unlike others, we don’t buy formulas, we create and rate our products within our own factories. We take great responsibility for every step of the process, from sourcing the first ingredient to the moment the product reaches the shelf. Even our packaging is developed internally. In today’s world, quality is paramount because it builds customer trust. When you fulfill your promises, you build trust with your customers and they can witness the results. On this foundation that trust is established.
On Oriflame being unique and different than your competitors
There are nearly three hundred thousand people here who can attest to our results. Half of them will stand up, which shows the trust we’ve built. Show me one brand that can demonstrate these results on a daily basis. This is how we gain our unique advantage—real testimonials from people who benefit from our products and the opportunity to earn money. They can show you their accounts and where the money comes from each month. I firmly believe that the performance and quality of our products are crucial because they educate our customers. While today’s market is driven by discounts, this is just the beginning. The middle class is sure to gain growth in the future, and we need to be there to support them.
On influencers
In a world saturated with communication, everyone is trying to sell something. When I open my Instagram, I see that 50 per cent of the content is advertising, and that’s when I realized I needed to do something for the people. The individuals you see at this event are our true influencers. The North East is our largest market, where we excel within the regional community. We provide them with opportunities to uplift themselves.
On integrating AI into your platform
Imagine we have four hundred and fifty products and change our merchandising every month. Forecasting inventory each month is very challenging because one month a product might be sold at a 10 per cent discount, the next month without a discount, and the third month at a 30 per cent discount. To manage this, we rely heavily on AI to help forecast our processes and for marketing purposes. We also provide our web partners with business apps that display their business status, complete with data. Additionally, we’ve launched an app that simplifies social media presence by helping users create posts, which aids in training our team members and keeping them updated with the latest knowledge, all for free.
Brands
Boeing appoints Barun as head of FP&A for global engineering function
Seasoned finance leader to steer budgets and strategy across global centres
BENGALURU: Boeing’s finance cockpit has a new pilot, and he is no stranger to turbulence or transformation. Boeing has appointed Barun as head of FP&A for global engineering, placing him at the centre of financial strategy for its worldwide engineering and technology operations.
Based in Bengaluru, Barun steps into a role that is as expansive as it is critical. He will serve as the primary finance lead for Boeing’s Engineering and Technology Centers globally, working closely with executive leadership to shape financial decisions, manage complex budgets, and design scalable finance processes that support the company’s growing engineering footprint.
In a note announcing his move Barun said, “I’m excited to share that I’ve joined Boeing Global Engineering. This opportunity is incredibly meaningful to me not just from a professional standpoint, but also for what Boeing represents globally.” He added that he looks forward to contributing to an organisation that continues to shape the future of aerospace and innovation.
Barun’s mandate spans strategic financial leadership, operational oversight, and stakeholder engagement. From directing large-scale budgets and schedules to influencing long-term organisational goals, the role blends financial discipline with business foresight. He will also lead cross-functional teams and partner with finance colleagues worldwide to support engineering programmes across geographies, including India.
The appointment caps a long stint at Juniper Networks, where Barun spent over a decade, most recently as finance senior manager. There, he led FP&A for global product business units and G&A functions, driving budgeting, forecasting, and long-range planning. He also played a key role in enterprise-wide transformation, including spearheading an Oracle to SAP ERP migration and building advanced analytics capabilities using tools such as Tableau and SAP Analytics Cloud.
His earlier career includes finance leadership roles at Sony India Software Centre, Cognizant Technology Solutions, and Mphasis, where he focused on financial planning, governance frameworks, and operational efficiency across global delivery centres.
A chartered accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Barun brings nearly two decades of experience across financial planning, digital transformation, and analytics-led decision making.
His appointment comes at a time when global engineering operations are becoming increasingly complex and distributed, requiring sharper financial oversight and agile planning. With Barun at the helm of FP&A for engineering, Boeing appears to be tightening its financial playbook as it looks to scale innovation with discipline.
