Top-deck rejig: Bali to head Britannia global ops, Varun Berry India biz

In a top-level reshuffle at Britannia, one of India’s leading food companies, managing director Vinita Bali who has been with the company for over eight years will now focus on international markets, while chief operating officer Varun Berry would lead India operations.

The move will help scale up Britannia’s international presence and transition the company to an all-embracing food company from a bakery/dairy company. According to the company’s statement, the restructuring marks its intention to aggressively scale up its international operations and at the same time, increase focus on India operations to increase market share in the face of heightened competition.

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“Vinita Bali (Managing Director) will focus on international business, Britannia Nutrition Foundation and new business development so as to create adjacencies and new opportunities that will lead Britannia from being a bakery company to becoming an all-embracing food company,” it added.

Berry has 27 years of experience with leading companies like Hindustan Unilever and Pepsico Foods and his last assignment was with Pepsico Foods India as CEO.

“With these changes we are preparing Britannia for high growth in Britannia’s India operations by catering to changing food habits of the evolving Indian consumer and pursuing opportunities for growth in the overall food domain, here and abroad,” Britannia Industries Chairman Nusli Wadia said.

“With Britannia on a high-growth path, it seems the management has opted to split responsibilities. Though Vinita Bali will still be in charge of the company as the MD, Varun Berry will have the onerous task of handling the fast-growing business in India,“Gaurang Kakkad, an analyst with Religare Institutional Research, was quoted as saying in the Business Standard.

This is the second management restructuring announced by Britannia this year. In January, the company named a new chief financial officer and said that Berry will replace Neeraj Chandra as COO. Since this in the second restructuring in the last five months, it seems the company is getting increasingly serious about the business.

At the same time, questions are also being raised about why Bali, who is set to retire in two years, is being asked to focus on global operations which only contribute around 5 percent of Britannia’s revenues. According to a report in the Business Standard , though Bali turned around Britannia from a biscuit-focussed entity into a diversified one, she did not deliver much on revenues and net margins, and nor did she manage to beat competition from ITC and Parle.

During Bali’s tenure the company’s revenues have quadrupled from Rs 1,510 crore in 2005 to Rs 6,185 crore in 2013 but net profit in these eight years has increased at a much slower pace from Rs 149 crore to Rs 259 crore.

Shares of Britannia Industries closed at Rs 665.85 on the BSE, up 15.91 percent from its previous close on Monday. However, this morning the stock opened 1.3 percent down on the BSE.