Yash Kumar promoted to director strategy at KFC India

GURUGRAM: From Gurugram to Louisville to Plano, and now back to Gurugram. Yash Kumar has started a new chapter as director strategy at KFC India, bringing home the learnings from three years driving transformation with KFC US. His career at KFC began a decade ago in India, and he now returns to the market where it started.

Kumar joins from the US, where he was most recently regional market planning lead for the US, Canada and Latin America, based in Plano, Texas. Before that, from August 2023, he was head, market planning and development analytics, in Louisville, Kentucky. His KFC career spans more than ten years and eight designations.

The climb has been steady. Kumar joined KFC in May 2016 as a management trainee in Gurgaon. He became deputy manager, business planning, in July 2017 and manager, business planning, in February 2019. In February 2021, he moved up to senior manager, market and growth planning, and in August 2022 became head, market and growth planning, in Gurugram. He then took his planning expertise to the US, where he led market planning and analytics before taking charge of the regional brief for the US, Canada and Latin America.

India, Kumar says, is where the energy is. “Thrilled to share that I’m starting a new chapter as director strategy at KFC India,” he said. “Having spent the last three years driving transformation with KFC US, it feels incredible to bring those learnings back home to where my career began a decade ago. Stepping back into the Indian market, I couldn’t be more energised. India is hands down one of the most exciting, fast-growth spaces out there, and the momentum here right now is electric. I’m super grateful for the opportunity, can’t wait to team up with the crew here, and am ready to help script our next big chapter.”

He signed off on a note of optimism: “Here’s to old roots, new adventures, and building what’s next!”

Kumar’s foundations were laid early. He is a graduate in economics from Fergusson College, Pune University, with a first division. He then spent two years in B2B business with a Pune-based company, working closely with clients such as Ion Exchange, Thermax and Forbes Marshall, supplying products for setting up water treatment plants across India. His profile lists the role as marketing manager at Aster Technologies, from June 2012 to May 2014, in the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad area. The job gave him the chance to develop distribution and customer service strategies with the marketing and product development teams.

In April to June 2015, he completed a summer internship at Titan, in the Tanishq and GoldPlus jewellery division. There he learnt how to assess the market potential for a product or brand in a given market, identified the key success factors for a product or brand in different markets, and suggested retail strategies for the long-term sustainability of the business. He also served as president of the marketing club at NMIMS, working with large groups of students, vendors, corporates and educational institutes to organise pan-India participation in marketing events.

Together, these experiences, in Kumar’s words, built three abilities. The first is identifying changing customer needs and aligning quickly with multidisciplinary teams across sales, marketing, product development, customer service and finance to meet them, honed through his two years in B2B business. The second is working independently in a market without direct supervision, using assigned tools to assess market potential and recommend short-term and long-term retail strategies, built during the Titan internship. The third is working with large teams, developed as president of the marketing club at NMIMS.