Tag: Landmark Group

Max Fashion promotes insider as CEO

MUMBAI: Retail empires are not built by the faint-hearted. Sumit Chandna, freshly installed as chief executive of Max Fashion, knows this better than most. The 25-year veteran, promoted from deputy chief executive at Lifestyle International, has spent a career extracting profits from India’s cutthroat retail trenches.

His record is formidable. At every stop—Shoppers Stop, Hypercity, Aditya Birla Retail, Bata India and Landmark Group—Chandna has delivered the same brutal formula: fatter margins, leaner costs, higher sales. It is a skill honed across hypermarkets, department stores and specialist retail, from high fashion to groceries.

A graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Delhi, Chandna earned his stripes at Shoppers Stop, where he launched India’s first designer co-brand, Kasba, with Raghavendra Rathore. At Hypercity, he built merchandising systems from scratch and delivered results 70 per cent above plan with margins six percentage points higher than target. During an 11-year stint at Aditya Birla Retail, he rose to chief merchandising officer, pushing promotional sales from eight per cent to 23 per cent in four months and launching profitable private-label lines.

Three years at Bata India saw him juggle retail operations and merchandising before Landmark Group poached him in 2022 to run Max as deputy chief executive. Now he has the corner office.

Chandna is also a certified executive coach who has recruited talent from top business schools across India and Asia, lectured at management campuses and attended leadership programmes at Harvard and IMD in Lausanne. He won the Aditya Birla Group chairman’s award for exceptional contribution—no small feat in a conglomerate that size.

His mandate at Max is simple: keep the juggernaut rolling. In announcing his promotion, Chandna promised to lead the brand into its “next phase of growth, innovation, and impact”. Strip away the corporate speak, and it means the same thing it always has: sell more, spend less, make more.

October 5, 2025
Film marketer sets up own production house

MUMBAI: Khyati Madaan, a film marketing professional with over a decade of experience at some of India’s most prestigious entertainment companies, has announced the official launch of her own production house, Not Out Entertainment on Linkedin.

The IIM and NIFT alumna brings industry pedigree to her new venture, having previously served as head of marketing at Maddock Films and held marketing positions at Red Chillies Entertainment, Kolkata Knight Riders and Disney.

At Red Chillies, Ms Madaan was part of the team behind innovative digital campaigns for Zero, starring Shah Rukh Khan. The film became the first Bollywood production to utilise Amazon’s Alexa, develop a Snapchat filter and create a WhatsApp sticker pack as part of its promotional strategy.

Before her tenure at major film houses, Madaan worked at Everymedia Technologies, where she rose to become vice president of marketing and director of analytics. During her time there, the company won awards for digital marketing campaigns, including recognition for the blockbuster Heropanti.

Madaan’s career path has been diverse, including earlier roles at Trent Ltd, JJ Valaya, and Landmark group in Dubai, where she worked as head of retail and as an assistant buyer respectively.

With Not Out Entertainment, Madaan aims to transition from marketing films to producing them. Her cricket-inspired company name suggests she believes there are many more innings to come in her professional journey—or as the famous Bollywood tagline goes, picture abhi baaki hai.

April 7, 2025
Dubai-based Landmark Reach hires Vivek Mishra as head of audience

MUMBAI: He spent a good five years at Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc India) between 2017 and 2022 as vice-president digital products & business. Vivek Mishra then moved on to Dubai to work with Aqilliz – a Saas platform – for a couple of years. At Aqilliz, he led the development of innovative data solutions across multiple markets, building privacy-compliant audience targeting solutions and managing large-scale data implementations.

And now Vivek has joined Landmark Reach, Landmark Group’s retail media team as head of audience in Dubai The Landmark group has over 2,000 retail stores across the Middle East, India and south east Asia.

“Vivek will be instrumental in developing our audience strategy, leveraging our first-party data from millions of loyalty customers to create value for our brand partners across the Landmark group ecosystem and the open internet. Looking forward to the impact he’ll make in shaping the future of our retail media business across the trinity of channels,” said head of media retail Landmark group Sohail Nawaz in a post on Linkedin.

Prior to Barc, Vivek had stints with Nielsen and Tata Consultancy Service in the US.

December 5, 2024
Ogilvy Mumbai wins creative mandate for ‘Shukran’

MUMBAI: Ogilvy’s Mumbai office, which has been handling the creative duties for Home Centre in Middle East and North Africa for over a year, has now won the creative duties for Shukran, a loyalty programme of Landmark Group.

The win was a result of a multi-agency pitch. Ogilvy Mumbai & Kolkata president Navin Talreja said, “Our reputation as the most effective agency office in the world started getting clients across the world to recognise India, and specifically Ogilvy Mumbai as a center of excellence. The mandate from Home Centre for Middle East & North Africa last year and more recently winning the opportunity to build their loyalty program brand across eight countries, is proof that clients will go any distance to find the right partners.”

Ogilvy south Asia executive creative director Sumanto Chattopadhyay said, “There is something deeply satisfying about creating work that works in markets beyond one’s home turf. The success of our Home Centre campaign has given us this opportunity to create greater brand value for the Landmark Group.”

As the region’s largest retail loyalty programme with over 6.5 million members in eight countries, with over 50 brands spread across 1100 stores, Shukran aims to take the concept of ‘loyalty’ to an entirely new level, redefining rewards in every lifestyle category imaginable – including clothing, footwear, accessories, salons and spas, home furnishings, electronics, sports, entertainment and restaurants.

Shukran loyalty GM Rajesh Rishi said, “We were very clear that we wanted to work with the best team to take Shukran to the next level; after a rigorous process we found Ogilvy’s approach and methodology best fit to take on the unique challenge of taking a programme our size and business impact to the next level. Given Ogilvy’s expertise and diversity, we are looking forward to taking on these challenges together in unique and refreshing ways to strengthen our brand equity in the region and beyond.”

September 24, 2014
Ratnakar Rao quits Maa TV Network

MUMBAI: Maa TV network group head Ratnakar Rao has decided to quit the company.

Speaking about his stint with the network he says, “I wanted to bring the channel to the top position, which I did. I wanted to do something big which I did by getting Meelo Evaru Koteshwarudu to the channel. Now I have decided to look for a change.”

Rao hasn’t decided where will be heading next.

Rao has over 30 years of experience in the field of marketing, advertising and communications. Prior to joining Maa TV, he has worked at various places such as DDB Worldwide Communications Group, RK Swamy BBDO, Landmark Group and Alghanim Industries.

August 13, 2014
Max to up store count to 56 by March 2011

BANGALORE: Dubai-based Landmark Group’s value fashion retail brand Max plans to increase the number of stores in the country from the current 38 to around 50-56 by the end of March 2011. This was revealed by Max executive director Vasanth Kumar during the launch of the 37th and 38th store in Bangalore.

“Next Friday, we open an outlet in Cochin. Till the end of March, we’ll be opening a store almost every 10 days,” informed Kumar. The chain has witnessed year on year growth of around 35 per cent over the last three years.

The Landmark uses radio strategically for its Max brand of stores- during store launches in any city. It uses ‘bursts of advertisements’ on any of the top three radio stations based on listenership numbers, to create awareness about its presence in a locality. It uses the print media and outdoor billboards within a five kilometer radius of the new store. Besides mass media communication bursts during launches, it also holds local events with a social cause and/or invites the common people to see celebrities in the new store.

It spends around 3-4 per cent of its revenues towards marketing, brand building and mass media communications.

December 4, 2010