Coca-Cola brings together ‘marketing’ and ‘commercial’; Debabrata Mukherjee to head functions as VP

Coca-Cola India announced a series of top level management changes on Friday, 23 August.

The company has named Debabrata Mukherjee, currently VP - strategy and still beverages, its VP - marketing and commercial. The ‘marketing’ and ‘commercial’ roles are being brought together under one head, the company said, for ‘deeper and combined focus on commercial and shopper marketing as well as product commercialisation’.

Anupama Ahluwalia, currently VP - marketing, will take up a ‘short term leadership assignment’ with Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages to get direct experience within the bottling system, and 'Upon completion of the assignment, Anupama will then return to Coca-Cola India', a company statement said.

Andriy Avramenko, currently VP - juice, will take over as VP - strategy and still beverages.

The changes, effective 1 October, are in keeping with its vision of India becoming a top five market for The Coca-Cola Company by 2020 (by volume sales), the statement explained.

Venkatesh Kini, deputy business unit president, India and South West Asia, said, “Building our talent pipeline and developing people capability is one of our key pillars for success. The new senior level management changes being announced today is a step in that direction. The entire team will work closely with our bottling partners to achieve our Vision 2020 goals in India.”

Mukherjee joined the company in 1998. Donning a series of marketing and general management roles, he headed marketing for Coca-Cola in Korea before returning to India in 2011.

Ahluwalia has led the marketing function at Coca-Cola India for over two years.