Nestlé India chief drives tech-led reboot

Nestlé India's new chairman wants to leverage tech to improve end-to-end efficiency, and not just in the company's factories, supply chain or sales

- Suneera Tandon

“Faster, more flexible and more focused.” That's what Nestlé India chairman and managing director (MD) Manish Tiwary wants the packaged foods company to become.

Less than a year at the company, the former Amazon India country manager and Unilever executive plans to achieve these goals by making the company more tech-ready across operations, improving its reach in the urban and rural markets, and using micro-markets to step up innovation and premium launches. Tiwary wants to leverage technology to improve efficiency end-to-end, not just in factories, supply chain or sales, and to invest savings in its brands.

"There are three focus areas there—strengthening our core brands—legacy is good, but we need to keep on further building on it. Second is the premiumization part of it. Third is, how do we build up Purina (pet food), Nespresso, and the Nestlé Professional business? These are very new businesses which we are building. We need money for that and that's where that whole digitization piece comes in," Tiwary said in his first interview after assuming the role.

Nestlé Professional is the company's business-to-business arm that provides branded food and beverage solutions.