Bata’s global Indian CEO to come up with new and creative strategies!

Mr Sandeep Kataria to focus on renewed consumer expectations and preferences by taking advantage of the global scale along with staying locally relevant and analyzing consumer preferences.  

It is fair to think that Mr Sandeep Kataria is proving to put all his intentions and marketing intelligence into the business. With Bata’s presence in 71 countries, ranging from Ecuador in Latin America, Colombia, Chile, Singapore, the Far East of Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and more, he is spending a lot of time with the regional presidents to understand the market and functions for devising the mid-term strategies.

Despite having a very capable leadership team looking after the Indian operations, Mr Sandeep is still overseeing it, devoting his first half of the day to India and the second half to the global operations. This is a fill-in until Bata announces the new CEO in India.

India’s contribution to the global business:

Looking back at the 2019 sales turnover as a company, India has proven to be the single largest country. Although, America, Africa, European business, India, and the Asia Pacific have proven to be just as much strong and roughly equal-sized.

Bata’s global revenue:

Being a private company, it doesn’t  have the exact global revenue turnover but India is about one-fifth of the turnover for Bata.

Top priorities of Sandeep Kataria for the company post-pandemic

As we know that Europe, Latin America, or even some markets in Southeast Asia are still battling with the pandemic and therefore Bata has decided to put the safety of the employees and their customers first. The attempt of stabilizing the company as an omni-channel by the end of 2021 is being continued. Bata has decided to stay locally relevant after seeing the changes in consumer preferences. In an interview, Sandeep said, “There’s a lot of innovation and agility that the teams have shown across the world, whether it was to launch new initiatives like the WhatsApp calling based ordering or the store-on-wheels or helping out the communities. We need to make sure that it stays nurtured and as we come out of pandemic, we’re able to build on that culture.”

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Consumers and their inclination to casual wear:

Due to the emerging WFH culture, the lasting impact of comfort has made its place in everyone’s lives. People are preferring more casualization when it comes to their footwear as well, which means that comfort and casualization would be rowing the trend and fashion boat. Bata comfort has always been one of the pillars of the brand and equity.

Athleisure to influence Bata fashion and production?

Bata has started testing its training and fitness apparel under the Power Brand. People are more fitness conscious and athleisure is more of an attraction to Bata’s target audience. It is also coming up with Bubble Gummer accessories to start testing in the market.

Are physical stores in retail a good idea post-pandemic?

Bata understands that it is too early to go one way or the other and is strengthening both offline and online product availability and purchase for its consumers, seeing a huge opportunity to be omni-channel. It is planning on increasing their online availability to make the inventory productive across the stores.

Initiatives of the pandemic to stay

The WhatsApp-based ordering system is now prevalent in many countries. The store-on-wheels which started in India has also taken wings.

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Slow fashion to replace fast fashion post-pandemic?

A rapid growth in the awareness and consumer interest of being more responsive towards the environment has been noticed. On Bata’s part, they have been on this journey for a while now. Different initiatives like making sure that the factories are zero effluent and the use of recycled tyers in the Power shoes by Bata have been taken into action.

As the CEO of Bata India, Mr Kataria has helped drive the organization’s reliable development and benefit. Under his authority, Bata India multiplied its benefits driven by twofold digit topline development, and supported probably the sharpest mission, including ‘Shockingly Bata’, that patched up Bata’s picture as a contemporary brand focused on more youthful buyers.