Nadia Chauhan, Joint Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer of Parle Agro, has her sights set on the goal of making the Food and Beverage (F&B) company a Rs 5,000-crore entity by 2018 and the number one beverage company in India.
With Prakash Chauhan, her father at the helm, Nadia joined the company in 2003 as part of the marketing team managing the brand Frooti. Over the years she has grown to take over the entire marketing department, sales, R&D, transformation, global markets, new business and eventually take on her current role as Joint Managing Director and CMO, Parle Agro.
Like any other child, Nadia also dreamt of being a vet and all kinds of other things. “But at the back of my mind and as I grew up, I knew there was only one thing I would want to do, join my father’s business and take forward his legacy,” she says. She remembers her first product launch and explains: "After I joined in an official capacity, Appy Fizz was my first brand launch. I am very passionate about our brands and as a corporate, we take pride in the fact that a prerequisite towards launching a product is to ensure that it’s an experience the country has never had before. It was amazing to launch Appy Fizz. This brand, while its had like every other new brand launch its own set of challenges, today it is one of our fastest growing brands in our portfolio. It feels great to be able to launch, nurture and grow brands."
Surprisingly, at the age of 11 she started her own venture. With ample encouragement from the family she started Just Divine, a baking company. She would bake brownies on order. Since there was no social media those days, she used to make sales calls and go door to door selling. It was an amazing experience, she remembers. Later she ventured into making tie and dye T-shirts that she sold door to door all over their neighbourhood in Vile Parle East. And finally, she found her place at Parle Agro.
Since the core values of the company and the family have been defined so well that there is no scope for cracks, according to her. When her father inducted her and siblings into the business, the key thing he did was to define each of our responsibilities based on their passion, skills, strengths and ability to contribute to the business. It made it so easy for them to settle down in their roles.
Nadia spends a lot of time with her children over the weekend at her farmhouse. As a child she used to do horse riding for hours, an activity she plans to take up when her children grow up a bit more and can ride with her too.
In her current role, Nadia is responsible for developing and building Parle Agro. The most exciting aspect of her role according to her is to envision the future, and chart out a road map for the company to achieve the aggressive goals and the large vision they have for themselves to make Parle Agro the largest F&B company in India.
For her, to ensure that Parle Agro reaches new heights every year and to take all those steps towards making it the Number 1 Food and Beverage brand of India is the priority.
BW Reporters
The author is associate editor at BW Businessworld
