Sandeep Kataria: The Indian who will lead Bata for the first time in its 126-year history

MUMBAI: For the first time in Bata NSE -1.82 %’s 126-years history, an Indian will lead the firm to ‘shoe the world’.

Sandeep Kataria, 49, who is currently Bata India’s CEO, has been elevated as global CEO of the company, as the current incumbent,Alexis Nasard, moves on.

Kataria is in distinguished company. Other Indians at the helm of global organisations include Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Ajay Banga of Mastercard, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Laxman Narasimhan of Reckitt Benckiser, Ivan Menezes of Diageo and Vasant Narasimhan of Novartis.

Kataria takes charge as global CEO with immediate effect as Nasard, who is stepping down after almost five years in the role, is reportedly set to join Kantar. An engineer from IIT-Delhi and a gold medallist of the 1993 PGDBM batch at XLRI, Kataria has 24 years of work experience at Unilever, Yum Brands and Vodafone in India and Europe. Kataria joined Bata India as CEO in 2017.

India is the top market for the Switzerland-headquartered footwear major. Under Kataria’s leadership, Bata India doubled its profits driven by a double-digit topline growth, and ran campaigns like ‘Surprisingly Bata’, to revamp the brand’s image and project it as contemporary, targeted at younger consumers. Bata India posted a net profit of Rs 327 crore on revenues of Rs 3,053 crore in 2019-20.

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