Our People
Akshay Mehra,
CEO. he has more than 10 years experience having worked in FMCG and retail industry and done his MBA from IIM, Calcutta. After doing his MBA, he worked with Procter and Gamble in India and in Singapore. He looked after the ASEAN, Australia and India markets for marketing of laundry brands. During his tenure, P&G gained market share leadership in its segment with the Tide brand in India and has now become the No. 2 brand in Urban India. After P&G, he moved back to India to work in the organized retail sector in India with the Aditya Birla Group in Mumbai, where he was the Head-Branding across Hypermarket and Supermarket formats, thus building experience in retail sector. VLS, with its focus on laundry and retail format, was thus, an instant fit with his past experience, which will be critical to build the laundry retail booths business.
Hari Nair, Strategic Advisor. Besides being an Advisor in VLS, Hari is also a Partner at Innosight Ventures (www.innosightventures.com), a venture capital firm based in Singapore. Hari has been the key driver of Innosight Ventures’ socially focused efforts, engineering several businesses which substantially increase the income levels of the urban and rural poor, while creating services which are more accessible to India’s growing middle class. He possesses crucial on-the-ground business understanding of emerging markets, particularly India. His strategic input is focused on iterating and proving VLS’s business model during its early stages.
Venu Nayak, Operations Manager. Venu has almost 14 years of experience in the retail sector. Before joining VLS, he was heading Heritage Supermarket’s 23 stores in Bangalore. He is very familiar with setting and starting up retail operations with different organizations, having previously also worked with Shoppers’ Stop and Trinethra. He brings with him experience in defining processes, training, and in delivering business goals. Venus will be instrumental in leading VLS’s planned growth trajectory.
