Sethi to be Coke’s 1st woman CFO in India

NEW DELHI: Coca-Cola India is set to get its first woman CFO, as Sarvitha Sethi, commercial finance director of its central and southern Europe operations, will soon take over the reins from Sanjeev Kumar, VP finance for India and South West Asia for Coca-Cola.

This is being seen as part of a recent movement by top companies to hire more women as decision makers, as Sethi will be the only woman in Venkatesh Kini, president of Coca-Cola India and South West Asia’s core leadership team. Kumar, on the other hand, will become Coca-Cola’s finance director of South and East Africa business unit, which has over 35 countries under its fold.

The Indian arm of the Atlanta-based beverage maker will be promoting three of its top executives from its bottling unit Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages to head bottling operations in global markets. Hindustan Coca-Cola, which is company-owned, accounts for 65% of Coca-Cola’s production in the country, while the rest comes from 13 franchisee-owned bottlers.

Sanket Ray, head, commercial, Hindustan Coca-Cola, will take over as GM for Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam. Mayank Arora, responsible for overseeing bottling operations for Hindustan

Coca Cola

in Gujarat, Rajasthan and MP, will take over as president of Coca-Cola Beverages Sri Lanka, and Puneet Varshney, head of bottling operations in Karnataka and Kerala, will become MD of Bottlers Nepal.Both bottling operations in Nepal and Sri Lanka were franchisee-run before being acquired by Coca-Cola in the latter half of 2014.

Globally, under pressure from investors to reduce cost, Coca-Cola is in a race to divest company-owned bottling operations. The heavy movement of Indian bottling talent overseas, is being hailed by industry experts as a step by the company to better align its operating units against its global bottling footprint.

“Over the last six years, more than 75 Indian executives at Coca-Cola, have found roles outside India, some of them even choosing to come back to India after a successful stint,” said T Krishnakumar, CEO of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages.

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