Our Leadership Team

Hemant Rupani is a veteran business leader with over 2 decades of experience across diverse companies and industries. He is recognized for his ability to translate a strategic vision into tangible results, having built a reputation for executional excellence in both Indian and multinational organizations.

Hemant's extensive career includes leadership positions at top-tier companies. He joined Mondelez in 2016, where he progressed from Director of Sales for India to Vice President and Managing Director for Vietnam and ultimately, Business Unit President for Southeast Asia in 2022. In this role, he was responsible for key markets including Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Prior to Mondelez, Hemant has held significant roles at PepsiCo, Vodafone and Britannia Industries, among others. He began his professional journey in 1997 at ICI India Limited. In 1999, he joined PepsiCo in India and in 2002, moved to Infosys Technologies Limited. In 2004, he returned to PepsiCo, where he spent the next six years. He here held roles of increasing responsibility, eventually becoming Senior Vice President, Customer Marketing, India Beverages. In 2010, Hemant joined Vodafone and in 2014, moved to the foods company Britannia Industries as Vice President - Sales & Business Head, Breads.

Hemant earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Regional Engineering College in Jaipur, India and an MBA in marketing from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi.

Nikhil Arora is the Vice President of Human Resources at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), where he leads the company's People strategy in close alignment with business objectives. Nikhil oversees the People Leadership Team and drives human resources excellence across the organization, bringing together his extensive bottling business knowledge with strategic HR leadership capabilities.

With over two decades of HR experience, Nikhil brings deep expertise in talent management and strategic people operations. His career within the Coca-Cola System spans more than 12 years, beginning with HCCB in 2013. Nikhil's leadership journey continued with The Coca-Cola Company, where he served as Total Rewards Director for APAC and later as Senior Director for APAC, Eurasia, and Middle East. These roles equipped him with valuable regional insights and a comprehensive understanding of people strategies across diverse markets.

Before joining the Coca-Cola System, Nikhil honed his HR expertise in consulting with Aon Hewitt, where he led rewards consulting for the FMCG industry, and held roles at Ranbaxy and ICICI Bank. He holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, and a B.Tech in Electronics & Communication from National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra.

Nikhil's strong business partnership approach and passion for developing people position him to support HCCB's continued growth and organizational success.

Avinash Kant Kumar is the Head of Integrated Supply Chain. A senior industry leader with over three decades of experience, Avinash oversees end-to-end supply chain operations across the HCCB network, ensuring efficiency, resilience, and excellence in manufacturing, logistics, procurement, and distribution.

Prior to joining HCCB, Avinash held strategic leadership roles across prominent organizations including Jubilant FoodWorks, Coca-Cola India, Procter & Gamble, Reliance Retail amongst others where he played a key role in end-to-end Supply Chain and Procurement transformation, leading initiatives across Sourcing, R&D, Quality Assurance, and New Factory projects. At Jubilant Foodworks, Avinash was instrumental in expanding the supply chain for new brands, enabling the successful market entry of Domino’s in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh , along with leading local brand development of Hong's Kitchen and Ekdum Biryani. His diverse background also includes an entrepreneurial stint, as the Founder and Director of Focusale Private Limited, a Premium Foods Company with pan-India presence.

Avinash is recognized for building agile and tech-enabled supply chain ecosystems that support business growth and market responsiveness. He has led initiatives across India and international markets to streamline operations, enhance supplier ecosystems, and drive digitization within the value chain.
He holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering from NITIE, now IIM Mumbai.

Saba Sharma is the Chief Supply Chain Officer. In this capacity, as Chief Procurement Officer, Saba has played a pivotal role in building the Procurement function, consistently delivering value through a robust pipeline of suppliers, ensuring resilience in a competitive and volatile environment, and contributing significantly to HCCB's bottom-line and top-line objectives. Her strategic leadership has driven value creation and strengthened supplier assurance, positioning HCCB's procurement as a key enabler of business growth.

Prior to joining HCCB, Saba worked with Procter & Gamble where she took several leadership roles across categories and worked on Indian and international assignments. She is credited with developing talent and making procurement a sphere of competitive edge, for the business.

She is based at the HCCB headquarters in Bengaluru and is a member of the senior leadership team that reports into the CEO

Saba has a passion for diversity and inclusion and has been a change leader in this domain

Harsh Bhutani, is the Chief Financial Officer at HCCB. With over 25 years of experience as a seasoned financial professional, Harsh has made significant impact by prioritizing, aligning, and driving key initiatives that enabled and accelerated growth and drove significant productivity initiatives, revenue growth management, and new resources allocation models in the India and Southwest Asia region. Harsh was a critical architect in building the system of the future for The Coca-Cola Company in INSWA with multiple refranchising decisions. His relentless focus on supporting the sustainability priorities of the company and taking meaningful steps towards creating a circular economy like introducing rPET partnerships have yielded positive results. 

Prior to this role, Harsh was heading the Finance and Business Services verticals for Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, as Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer for over three years. Harsh has been an integral part of the Finance Function at Bottling Investments Group for India & Southwest Asia, for over two decades and had the opportunity to work in the Zonal and Corporate Finance functions for HCCB. He joined Coca-Cola in 1999 from ABB Limited.

Harsh’s experience spans various finance domains such as business strategy, planning and execution, performance management, treasury, taxation, and risk management—just to name a few.

Harsh is a Commerce Graduate from Delhi University and a qualified Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. In his spare time, Harsh spends time with his family. He also enjoys cycling, gardening, and long-distance drives.

Shalini Ratwatte is the General Counsel for Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), and the Director of Legal and Compliance at Coca-Cola Beverages Sri Lanka.

Shalini comes with over 30 years of extensive experience in legal and compliance, policy development, strategic planning, and coalition building at regional, state, and local levels across emerging markets in Southeast Asia and sits on the Boards of Sunshine Holdings PLC, the Environmental Foundation Limited and The Galle Cancer Fund.

Prior to joining Coca-Cola Beverages Sri Lanka Limited, Shalini was the Head of Corporate, External and Legal Affairs, Southeast Asia New Markets for Microsoft Asia. There she covered nine countries.

Shalini is passionate about wildlife & conservation, technology & innovation, and uplifting children & youth in disadvantaged communities. She serves as a pro bono advisor and patron for these initiatives.

Prasanna currently serves as the Commercial Head. Previously, he was the Chief Transformation Officer at HCCB, where he was responsible for several transformation projects, including Returnable Capabilities, S&OP evolution, Cross-functional interactions, and Process simplification, among others.

Prasanna has been with the Coca-Cola System for 21 years, starting as a Sales Manager. He has held diverse leadership roles across functions such as Commercial, Supply Chain, Business Transformation and ERP implementation, Business Shared Services, and IT and Digital.

In his previous role as CIO, Prasanna brought large-scale digital transformation to HCCB. He drove capability-building, adoption, and use of digital solutions. He led the end-to-end digitization of processes to facilitate business growth, efficiency improvement, cost reduction, and streamlined ways of working and spearheaded the implementation of more than 30 digital initiatives.

Prasanna is a postgraduate in management from IIM Bangalore

Himanshu Priyadarshi is the Chief Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability Officer for HCCB.

He is responsible for defining HCCB’s strategy to continue inspiring growth and building trust with key stakeholders. He also works closely with Commercial, Supply Chain, and Enabling Functions to drive HCCB’s sustainability agenda and ensures that stakeholders recognize HCCB as a champion for our company’s purpose to refresh the world and make a difference.

Prior to joining HCCB, Himanshu was the Head of Public Affairs and Government Relations South Asia market in Tetra Pak. Himanshu has over 18 years of public policy and government affairs experience, having held various roles in leading companies such as PepsiCo India, Pfizer, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Reliance Industries, and Panacea Biotec

Himanshu graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Environment Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka, and holds an MBA from Georgia Southern University, USA. He has also obtained multiple public policy and management-related certifications from the Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru, Harvardx, MICA, etc.

Yoginder Singh Grewal is the Chief Information Officer for HCCB. He is responsible for driving digital transformation, capability-building, adoption, and use of digital solutions to facilitate business growth, efficiency improvement, cost reduction, and streamlining the ways of working

Yoginder has over 30 years of experience in Information Technology, facilitating business growth through strategy design and execution and technology deployment in Digital business & Analytics area. He has helped HCCB drive technology strategy and transformation roadmap, implemented multiple projects to enable business growth and drive customer experience through Cloud migration, Digital Factory (Industry 4.0), Data warehouse/data lake solution using Azure and Power BI, robotic process automation, chat-bots and many more.

He Likes playing tennis and connecting with people.

Laura Cardona is the Head of Strategy and RGM for HCCB. She is responsible for
driving growth for HCCB by devising strategies for implementing long-range plans
and annual business plans. She also leads the market trends analysis and devises
strategies to drive business growth, maintain competitiveness, and achieve
organizational goals. She works with both internal and external stakeholders and
leads cross-functional teams in the execution of company-wide operational
strategies.
Laura has been in the Coca-Cola ecosystem for over 9 years, having started at
Coca-Cola FEMSA Colombia before working at Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines,
Inc (CCBPI).

Ashley D'Souza is the Chief Digital Officer for HCCB. In his role, Ashley leads and
oversees the development and support implementation of our company’s digital
initiatives, including our Digital eB2B strategy. This involves collaborating and
providing thought leadership to cross-functional teams for identifying and prioritizing
key business digital opportunities, as well as leveraging tech and digital solutions to
enhance the efficiency and productivity of current RTM with the aim of driving growth
through our eB2B Channel.

Ashley leads digital transformation acceleration across our ecosystem, containing
pillars on Demand Capturing, Demand Generation, Demand Fulfilment, Payment
gateways, and Customer Relationships by building and embedding practices
involving new Digital Capabilities and Tech, Data, and analytics insights. Ashley leads
the Digital Trade Marketing, Digital Product Management, and Digital Analytics pillars.

Ashley brings with him an impressive 18 years of experience across multiple
industries and organizations. His most recent role was as Head of Marketing &
Revenue for Amazon B2B, where he successfully launched Amazon Distribution
services in Hubli and introduced credit services for Amazon business customers.

Ashley began his career as a Management Trainee at Unilever in 2004 and held
significant roles, including becoming Branch Head at Colgate Palmolive in 2011. He
then ventured into the start-up world, contributing to the growth of Vega Foods and
Hector Beverages in 2015. He also joined Swiggy as VP for Business in 2017.

Ashley has a bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, and an MBA from
IIM Ahmedabad. He also has a Chartered Accountancy (Intermediate) degree from
the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Hernando "Nando" Garcia Zuluaga serves as the Commercial Head. He was formerly Chief of Staff at HCCB, where he played a key role in aligning strategic initiatives with the company's ambitious objectives, providing critical guidance to the CEO, and driving operational excellence. Nando's expertise spans multiple continents, having held leadership roles across Coca-Cola's operations in Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. Notably, his work in launching the Coke Buddy e-B2B platform has significantly advanced HCCB's digital capabilities, enhancing customer experience and adapting delivery models to diverse markets.

With an International MBA from EAE Business School in Madrid, Nando began his career in Colombia at Quala S.A., quickly moving into commercial and trade marketing roles. Beyond his professional achievements, Nando is a family man and sports enthusiast, balancing a dynamic career with personal passions that fuel his commitment to excellence and growth.

Sunaina Dhanuka holds more than 25 years of leadership in FMCG, commodities, and financial services. She is a strategic leader with finance, business operations, and transformation expertise. Sunaina leverages her extensive experience at Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB) to drive strategic initiatives, implement change, and make decisions based on data as she guides the company's long-term growth aspirations.

Sunaina possesses extensive industry experience in the fields of procurement, commodity risk, and financial strategy. She served as Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) at Coca-Cola Bottling Investments Group (BIG), where she built the Procurement Centre of Excellence and inspired cross-market functional teams to drive significant cost efficiencies, supply chain resilience, and supplier-led innovation. At the direction of Sunaina, BIG was able to adapt to global volatility with ease while driving business value relentlessly.
She was most recently employed as a temporary role as Vice President – Treasury at The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), where she played the lead role in assessing hedging models and inventory financing model assessment.

She has held diversified leadership positions in the Coca-Cola system in the ASEAN and South Pacific territories with a wide range of experience in finance, procurement, treasury, and operations. Sunaina has also worked in the leading global organizations such as Unilever, Macquarie, Morgan Stanley, and Arthur Andersen, where she has done commodities, equities research, and tax consultancy. Described as a disciplined analyst and a leader who is a team player, she offers an uncommon blend of strategic insight and executional discipline.

She is an MBA holder in Finance, Leadership, and Change Management from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and is a Chartered Accountant as certified by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Abhishek Singh is the Commercial Head leading multi-state commercial operations, developing market-specific strategies, managing business performance metrics and nurturing high-impact teams. Before rising to the zonal leadership position, Abhishek held other significant roles within HCCB & the Coca-Cola system, such as the ZVP for Karnataka & Kerala, Country Sales & Commerical Director- Nepal, AVP Operations, Zonal Commercial Head. In these roles he drove Revenue, Distribution & Market Share expansion, enhanced go to market frameworks, and strengthened distributor & retail partnerships.

Known for his cross-functional expertise, Abhishek excels in areas such as sales strategy, trade execution, P&L management & developing high impact teams in shaping the market. Abhishek has played a pivotal role in local market transformations, leveraging digital adoption, dynamic pricing models, and reshaped product portfolios to align with evolving consumer trends across his zones.

Prior to joining HCCB, Abhishek has previous experience in leading teams in varied markets in leading FMCG organizations like J&J Consumer & Marico Ltd.

He earned his master's in management from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), one of India’s premier business schools.