Newspaper Summary 071126

 

IRST

NEW ON SCREENS

Jithu Madhavan teams up with Suriya for an action comedy, Lee Chang-dong returns with another delicate drama, and other titles

MUSICAS

Mujeres del Viento Florido This documentary short presents a lively portrait of Mujeres del Viento Florido, an all-female band with musicians from over 60 Indigenous Mexican communities. Directed by Lila Avilés, who made the excellent family drama Totem (2023). (MUBI)

SCENE

Untitled Tamil Project Jithu Madhavan, director of Aavesham and writer of Dada, makes his Tamil debut with this action comedy starring Suriya. What's intriguing is that the antagonist is played by the unlikely Nazriya. (In theatres)

THE GREATEST

Muhammad Ali Series This sports drama series is about the life of Muhammad Ali. Jaalen Best plays the legendary boxer, and the supporting cast includes Omari Hardwick, Dana Gourrier, Kai Parlam and Amin Joseph. (Amazon Prime)

POSSIBLE LOVE

Lee Chang-dong's Seventh Feature Lee Chang-dong is one of the foremost Korean directors of the past two decades. His films, which include Peppermint Candy, Secret Sunshine and Poetry, have won prizes at most of the major festivals, including Best Director and Grand Jury Prize at Venice and Best Screenplay at Cannes. Eight years after his last film, the brilliantly moody Haruki Murakami adaptation Burning (2018), comes his seventh feature. Possible Love is about two married couples whose lives intersect over the filming of a documentary. Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Sol Kyung-gu, Yoo In-soo and Cho Yeo-jeong. (Netflix)

Compiled by Uday Bhatia

HOW TO LOUNGE

CULTURE

The great TV 'Ramayan'

Arun Govil as Ram in Ramayan (1987)

India took its shoes off to watch this epic.

On Sunday mornings in 1987, television momentarily became a place of worship. The TV set was wiped clean, the living room was rendered free of ashtrays, and in far too many households across the country, footwear was parked outside the door. Nobody had instructed the nation to do this. There was no government circular, no religious injunction, no promotional campaign by Doordarshan. It simply seemed appropriate. The remarkable thing about Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan is not that it was watched by an extraordinary number of Indians. It is that it changed their behaviour.

India watched Ramayan less like a serial and more like a cricket match, with pre-existing devotion and accompanied by much chanting of the Lord’s name. The 78-episode series, which started in January 1987, attracted audiences of 80-100 million for its most popular episodes. Sure, India had only one TV channel at the time, but even in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, Ramayan returned to Doordarshan and recorded 77 million impressions on 16 April alone, according to BARC India. The government then cited this as the world’s most watched entertainment programme.

The man responsible for this phenomenon was born in 1917, near Lahore. Originally named Chandramouli Chopra, he was renamed Ramanand by his grandmother when she adopted him. The surname Sagar came later, a pen name he made his own. He first wrote under several names, including Ramanand Bedi and Ramanand Kashmiri. He had written Raj Kapoor’s iconic Barsaat, and made films including Aankhen, Geet and Charas.

According to his son Prem Sagar’s book An Epic Life, the inspiration for the name “Sagar” was an epiphany he had at Bombay’s Chowpatty beach, where he saw the ocean as a divine blessing. Ramanand Sagar, then nearly 70, defied his sunset years to take on one of the world’s great epics.

Arun Govil, the definitive screen Ram, was first offered the roles of Bharat and Lakshman. Govil, who debuted with Rajshri Pictures and enjoyed success with films such as Saawan Ko Aane Do as well as the popular Vikram Aur Betaal TV show, was determined to play Ram. He had to get the smile right. Once the production team saw him with that beatific expression, the bow was strung.

Govil’s Ram seems, at first glance, to involve little acting. He is impossibly composed, his face serene, his voice never betraying agitation. He has the air of a hero who has read the ending to his own saga, and knows how everything will turn out. Govil is impressively, reassuringly impassive. Occasionally, like Jeevan, he raises an eyebrow slightly.

Arvind Trivedi’s Ravana, on the other hand, was magnificently expressive, with furious Yosemite Sam eyebrows. An established Gujarati theatre actor, Trivedi first auditioned for the modest role of Kewat, the boatman who ferries Ram across the river. Sagar took one look at him and saw Lanka’s king. Trivedi’s Ravana is not simply a villain twirling his moustache. He is proud, learned, vain, wounded, imperious and—occasionally almost heartbreakingly—human.

Then came Dara Singh. The legendary wrestler and action star had already played Hanuman on screen in the 1970s. Singh felt he was too old for the serial, worrying that audiences might laugh at him. Yet his extraordinary physical presence, booming voice and natural warmth brought Hanuman alive. There was no need for elaborate VFX to convince us of his might. This was Dara Singh. He could have carried the entire production department on his shoulders.

Dipika Chikhlia, who played Sita, possessed a simple, understated dignity.

These actors were like a calendar coming to life. Ravindra Jain’s devotional music underscored the melodrama, while the production drew on multiple traditions of the epic, including Valmiki’s Ramayana and Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, alongside regional versions.

The popularity of the series coincided with the rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which sought to replace the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya with a temple dedicated to Ram.

Arvind Rajagopal’s 2001 book, Politics After Television, examines how the serial helped transform Ram from a familiar religious figure into an omnipresent national political symbol.

Ramayan was not mere entertainment. It helped create a shared visual vocabulary of religious identity at a moment when that identity was becoming increasingly politicized. The living room temple had consequences beyond the living room.

Even at the time, Ramayan’s special effects felt like cardboard, its battle scenes straight out of a school play. Oddly, this didn’t matter. We were sold on the show’s earnestness, aided by the conviction of its performers, the confidence of its storytelling, and the peculiar experience of watching an epic in the company of one’s family, neighbours and, effectively, the entire country.

We have more than one channel now. We have 4K televisions, OLED smartphones, streaming platforms, the world in our hands. We have also become rather more casual about what we watch, often doing so while scrolling through three other things. Reverence will, at the very least, be harder to summon. There is a new, massively budgeted Ramayana in theatres this week, with big stars and world-class visual effects. You and I will probably go watch it in 3D, on an IMAX screen. Will we, however, take our shoes off?

Raja Sen is a critic, screenwriter and columnist. His first play, a murder mystery called The Simla Affair, recently opened in Delhi. He is currently writing a horror film

TASTE

Move over chicken, duck is the new hero

Duck has made its way out of five-star hotels and into café, bar and restaurant menus as adventurous diners try different meats

One of the courses at Yyaku, a live-counter dining concept within Delhi's Japonico restaurant, features a duck salad infused with fresh greens and fermented Chinese cabbage, finished with a Cantonese-style dressing. It pairs with a cocktail made with duck fat-infused whiskey. The dish is part of a nine-course meal featuring everything from tarts, soups and salads to nigiri, rolls and even a duck ice cream.

"Duck is no longer the filler in the menu. It is the hero," says restaurateur and Yyaku's founder Sahil Sambhi. The idea for a "duck bar" came about when he noticed a growing demand for some of the duck dishes from the Japonico menu, including a version of Peking duck that head chef Roberto Blondi prepares tableside.

While Yyaku, which opened in July, heroes the bird meat, fine dining chefs and mixologists in restaurants, bars and cafes everywhere are finding new ways to bring it to their menus. Once largely associated with five-star hotel dining, it is now accessible to a wider pool of diners. Lower import duties have made it more affordable, while a growing appetite for newer varieties of meat is prompting chefs to experiment with it.

Chef Tarannum Sehgal of Delhi's latest cocktail bar Top Banana attributes it to affordability at newer restaurants. She serves a duck liver pâté éclair with plum pickle as well as duck skewers. Her inspiration comes from her time in France as a culinary student and later as an intern working at Michelin-starred restaurants, where she was introduced to rillettes, duck breast and eggs, and cocktails made with duck fat.

At Kaspers in Mumbai, chef Will Aghajanian believes it will take a while for diners in India to fully embrace duck. "They still play around more with chicken, and are reluctant to try out newer meats," he says. The European-style bistro plates up some "adventurous" dishes: duck tongue, which is braised, blanched, and crisped with porcini mushroom fried in duck fat, and served with a fried duck egg on top. He also makes duck confit morcilla (a version of Latin American blood sausage with apple strudel), and chicken liver mousse and pasta. Aghajanian says he enjoys working with duck meat because the entire bird can be used rather than just selective cuts.

According to a report in Business Standard, customs duty on imports of duck meat for supply to hotels (three-star and above) and luxury restaurants fell from 30 percent to five percent in 2024. This, according to people in the business, could benefit stakeholders, allowing them to pass savings on to customers.

Rohan Timblo, who runs a duck farm in south Goa, sees this as an opportunity for boutique farms that emphasize the produce. "Indian ducks were considered average, a reason why duck meat varieties from Thailand and the US were preferred. Our farm aims to change that," says Timblo, who started his farm when he saw an opportunity in rearing ducks on a controlled diet after a lacklustre duck meal at a restaurant in Mumbai.

Currently, he supplies the meat to restaurants such as Papa's, Bombay Canteen, Kaspers, Americano, Otra and La Loca Maria in Mumbai. He is planning to venture into other cities soon. Though it costs 30-40 percent more than its imported cousin which costs upwards of ₹600 per kilo, he has seen a rising demand over the last two years. He sells 200-plus ducks a month now, up from around 100 last year, with the sales rising substantially during the festive season.

For chefs who enjoy experimenting, duck meat, particularly in the absence of beef, becomes a rich, flavourful option to work with.

According to Chef Porfirio Arturo Castro Salazar at Heliconia, JW Marriott Goa, which specialises in Peruvian-Japanese cuisine, diners tend to be adventurous on holiday, and want to try meats they wouldn't really cook at home. When he came to India three years ago, "very few guests asked for duck dishes. In fact, one of the first dishes, a miso-glazed duck breast with Peruvian coriander rice," explains Salazar, "was rotated off the menu as our offerings evolved." Now the restaurant features the meat in gyozas and seasonal menus, allowing more room to experiment with flavours and techniques.

Many are circling back to regional delicacies and bringing them to life in contemporary ways. Chef Hussain Shahzad of Hunger Inc. Restaurants, serves duck momos inspired by Assamese cuisine and duck xacuti from Goa. There's also 'Wizard the Duck' at Papa's, a dish he describes as a "hybrid biryani-paella" that comes from his personal memory of taking the khunchan, or the slightly burnt, crispy layer at the bottom of the biryani his mother cooked.

Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, cookbook author and editor of Godrej Food Trends Report, says: "It's the beginning of the curve, sure, but time will tell how much it resonates with more number of diners because it is more common in fine dining where chefs have to put an alternate poultry."

Chef Shantanu Mehrotra of Indian Accent has been using duck meat (from Thailand) for over a decade, including duck khurchan kulcha. While the restaurant's Smoked Duck Biryani, made with Japanese koshihikari rice and served with burani raita, was part of the chef's tasting menu until recently, it now makes way for a Chettinad-style duck along with duck kulcha. "Back then I could bet we needed variety. When I think of poultry, it's incomplete without duck. Even today, I can't imagine our menus without it," he says.

With pricing remaining accessible, Indian diners are happily biting into the trend.

Abhilasha Ojha is a Delhi-based independent writer.

BUSINESS LOUNGE

VIMAL SHARMA

SMOOTH FINISH

Smoor's Vimal Sharma looks back on his childhood in Fiji, his introduction to chocolate-making in Australia, and making India the home of his premium chocolate brand

Illustration by Priya Kuriyan

When Vimal Sharma was growing up in Ba, a small town in Fiji in the 1970s, he would eagerly wait for his family to return from Australia because they'd bring back boxes of chocolates from duty-free. The 54-year-old founder and CEO of Smoor remembers snacking on Rocky Road, the nutty treat coated in melted chocolate, usually associated with Australia's Gold Rush from the 1850s. "It was sort of an early addiction to chocolates," he says.

After studying business management in Melbourne and working with F&B chains, Sharma moved to India to venture into the chocolate business. In 2016, he launched Smoor (previously Bliss Chocolates), having noticed that chocolate was largely an occasional indulgence for Indian consumers. He wanted to position it as an alternative to traditional sweets, with a focus on quality.

"Back then, chocolate was mostly imported, and a small number of brands catered to the mass category. It was also a time when Indians were becoming aspirational with higher disposable incomes owing to a boom in the tech sector, and aware of product choices," he says.

To tap into the evolving market, Smoor focused on high-quality couverture chocolate that uses a greater percentage of cocoa butter and is favoured for its rich taste, sheen, and snap.

Smoor sources almost 80% of its ingredients and chocolate components like pebbles and blocks from global manufacturers such as Barry Callebaut and Valrhona, simultaneously procuring single-origin beans from Ghana, Ecuador, the Ivory Coast, and Papua New Guinea.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, it runs 100 outlets in lounges, cafés, and kiosks in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Pune, and Chennai. It has over 100 products, ranging from handcrafted pralines, chocolate bars, and the viral kunafa chocolate bars to dragees, cookies, desserts, and hot chocolate sticks.

In 2025, it launched a 68,000 sq. ft experience centre at Bengaluru's Avalahalli with a chocolate lab and factory, where visitors can get a glimpse of the bean-to-bar chocolate-making process, and a café and store. In July, the centre celebrated World Chocolate Day with factory tours, tastings, and workshops.

Over the last few years, Smoor has grown from a predominantly offline business to an omnichannel brand. Digital sales accelerated significantly during the covid-19 pandemic, and it has been growing at a CAGR of 30% over the last three years, mostly organically without store expansion. Revenue for this financial year is expected to close at ₹265 crore.

THE EARLY DAYS

Perhaps Sharma's farming background influenced his approach to entrepreneurship, especially when it came to understanding ingredients. His great-grandparents migrated to Fiji as indentured labourers under British colonial rule, primarily to work on sugarcane plantations. "Farming was in our blood, but at the same time our family also managed to get educated," he says.

In 1989, at the age of 16, Sharma moved to Australia on a scholarship to study business management at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. As a side hustle, he worked part-time at KFC, then part of PepsiCo. Through the latter's partnership with Cadbury, he got an opportunity to visit the Cadbury factory in Tasmania, where he gained an understanding of the chocolate-making process.

Around the same time, political tensions in Fiji prompted Sharma's parents to move to Australia. "Chocolate really kept me going, and I ate a lot of it. I must say Australians consume a considerable amount of chocolate. At that point it didn't seem too technical."

He was curious to learn the craft behind artisanal chocolate. In 2005, he enrolled at Melbourne's Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School run by renowned chocolatier Kirsten Tibballs.

"She has been my guiding force in the world of chocolates. The course opened my eyes about the possibilities of working with couverture chocolate," he says.

During his time in Australia, Sharma had made several Indian friends who went on to hold senior positions across industries and businesses. Their conversations would often turn to the possibility of doing something together in India.

Although he had little direct exposure to the country, Hindi films, food, and popular culture had given him some familiarity with it.

"Since I loved chocolates, I came up with the idea of a chocolate café and it turned out to be a hit," he says. His friends encouraged him to take the lead given his experience in F&B, while they looked after the finances and some aspects of management.

Initially, the aim was to make good quality chocolate and put it on supermarket shelves. But over time "we realised that chocolate is something that needs to be experienced in its entirety. People need to touch, smell, and taste at the same time to be able to appreciate it," he says.

In 2008, he moved to Bengaluru to launch Bliss Chocolates, a chocolate-cafe lounge across locations including UB City, Mantri Square, and Whitefield. The stores allowed customers to enjoy handcrafted chocolates, cakes, desserts, chocolate beverages, and savoury snacks.

The company also set up a factory and production kitchen in Bengaluru later that year.

THE JOY OF GIFTING

Gifting was a key segment Sharma wanted to tap into. To understand consumer behaviour, he'd often visit traditional sweet shops to observe how people bought mithai. It was something he wasn't familiar with until he made India his home in 2008.

"I noticed that they were very particular about their choices. They'd take two pieces of this and four pieces of something else. In a way the customers were themselves customizing the box," he says.

Pralines were the first product category to be launched under Bliss, and Sharma wanted to replicate the mithai-shop experience in the store where people would choose the flavors of the pralines, get their boxes packed, and the rest would follow. "I wanted it to be a celebration brand."

Over the next couple of years, Sharma started looking at expansion and bringing in investment. In 2016, Bliss Chocolates was rebranded as Smoor primarily to position itself as a premium gourmet chocolate brand with a global identity.

The most significant external investment was from Rebel Foods in 2022, when it acquired a majority stake in the company. At the time, it was already an established chocolate brand with an omnichannel presence and had crossed 50 stores.

The partnership supported the next stage of scale, including wider distribution, physical expansion, and digital growth.

A year later, when the first flagship store opened in Indiranagar in Bengaluru, Sharma was convinced customer experience was everything. "One day I was at the sales counter when a customer walked in, looked at our products, and said, 'I think there's another brand who will be your competitor. It's called Bliss. But don't worry, you guys are better,'" he laughs.

Over the last 10 years, Smoor has sold millions of chocolate bars and 5 million pralines. Among bars, pralines, and hampers, bars contribute the highest share.

Gifting contributes nearly 30% of revenue and remains an important growth driver. Currently, Royce and Fabelle are its main competitors.

In 2013-14, Sharma brought in chocolatiers from Australia to train the staff, apart from setting up processes and protocols. One of them, he says, had a knack for spotting skills in unexpected places. "A painter who had come to paint the building caught her eye as someone who could be good at spraying chocolate. A carpenter, whose work called for a steady hand and precise cuts, seemed just right for slicing chocolate," he says, adding that they were eventually hired and trained for their individual roles.

Sharma strongly believes that product sampling helped the brand find its footing, especially at a time when there was no social media to promote it. Both in-store and on-ground sampling, and distributing gift boxes to select groups of people, primarily corporate clients, played a huge role in deciding price points, identifying location, and target audience.

THE TASTE FACTOR

Smoor's praline line-up features 20-25 flavour variations, nearly 12 of which have been around since its Bliss days. The selection includes a praline made with a 53% chocolate shell and a 70% dark ganache filling, mango and rum truffles, and Indian-inspired flavours such as badam milk and Assam tea. Almond sensation, made with almond flakes sourced from California, continues to be the highest-selling variant. Sharma also recalls a chilli chocolate praline made with Guntur chillies, which people enjoyed for its element of surprise. But the product did not initially sell. "Fast forward to today and fusion is the thing in food," he says, laughing at the irony. Changing perceptions, the comfort of familiar flavours, and evolving consumer tastes continue to drive Smoor's journey.

With global chocolate prices on the rise, he now plans to work with Indian cacao farms. For the past year, Smoor has been sourcing beans from farms in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh. The local beans currently account for approximately 10% of the sourcing, a number he wants to increase to 30% going forward. Over the next five years, he plans to expand the brand's presence to 200 touchpoints and revenue of ₹500 crore, out of which ₹150 crore will be from quick commerce.

Today, Sharma may prefer dark chocolate, but he still has a soft spot for the milky Cadbury bar he first tasted growing up in Melbourne. Sometimes life's simple pleasures are hard to outgrow.

Quick Facts Box (from sidebar):

• Favourite chocolatier: Kirsten Tibballs

• Sunday stress-buster: Netflix

• Favourite singer: Bob Marley

TV serials emerge as new content-to-commerce

Lata Jha lata.jha@livemint.com NEW DELHI

With TV channel Dangal TV—owned by Enter10 TV Network—and Flipkart coming together to create a content-commerce experience for the former's Hindi drama Rimjhim, entertainment industry experts said there is an opportunity for the strategy to be extended beyond upmarket, digital-first shows.

Audiences in the Hindi heartland, largely rural and semi-urban households watching free-to-air TV, may be receptive to integrations, they said. Serial viewers form strong bonds with characters, so a product used by a character borrows that character's credibility, they added.

Placement works best when woven into the plot rather than bolted on. That said, acting on it is harder. The viewer must leave a lean-back screen, pick up a phone, search and check out. Strong awareness and consideration could translate into modest direct purchases. Many free-to-air homes have no return path, so only viewers on YouTube or connected screens can click.

Unlike players such as The Good Glamm Group, which have implemented the content-to-commerce strategy via creators and digital media publications, shows such as Rimjhim weave products into TV show plots.

The way audiences consume broadcast entertainment on digital platforms like YouTube is evolving, and with that, the opportunity for brands to become a meaningful part of the content experience is changing. "Our collaboration with Flipkart and Starcom for Rimjhim on Dangal TV is a powerful example of how storytelling can move beyond simple awareness to create an interactive journey between content, discovery, and commerce," Manish Singhal, managing director, Enter10 TV Network had said upon the partnership.

This strategy opens up a potential third revenue stream for broadcasters beyond advertising and subscription.

This strategy will play out well in tier-II, III and IV towns, said Kartik Mehta, chief business officer and head of Asia at Channel Factory, a global technology and data platform. Categories such as fashion, beauty, and home decor will be ideal to experiment with.

Beyond delivering mass reach, traditional TV can now drive clearly attributable sales conversions, he said.

While shoppable TV was pioneered globally by platforms such as Roku, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock, India is catching up through recent partnerships such as Swiggy-JioStar and Dangal TV-Flipkart, Mehta added.

"This is a family-first, largely female audience in the Hindi heartland, for whom the daily serial is appointment viewing. The bond with a character built over months is exactly the trust influencer marketing tries to manufacture," said Amit Dhawan, co-founder at Markrand, an influencer marketing and user-generated content agency. In many ways, serial characters are India's longest-running influencers, and brands are only now normalising it.

Receptivity to the product will be high.

FMCG giants hit a sweet spot in India

Neeshir Janjit neeshir.janjit@livemint.com MUMBAI

Global fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) giants grappling with sluggish demand in China and Europe are increasingly betting on India for growth. From chocolates and toothpaste to beauty products and beverages, several multinationals reported strong sales and volume growth in India during the September quarter. Some are expanding their retail reach, others are committing fresh investments.

The optimism was evident in the companies' September quarter earnings commentary, with several executives singling out India as a standout growth market. India continues to outperform regions such as China and Europe, driven by double-digit top-line growth, strong volume gains, and rapid distribution expansion.

While Nestlé and Colgate-Palmolive described China as challenging, Unilever said Europe was "probably the most challenged region" in terms of market growth. That confidence in India comes despite mounting price pressures at home, making the strong performance of these companies more significant.

Retail inflation in India rose to a 22-month high of 5.34% in September from 4.82% in August, marking its eleventh consecutive monthly increase. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised its key interest rate in October for the first time since 2023 to contain price pressures fuelled by surging energy costs amid the US-Iran war. Deficient rainfall triggered by a strong El Niño phenomenon has fanned more worries over rural growth and consumption.

Yet for global consumer goods companies, India's vast, untapped potential, from reaching new consumers to expanding distribution and driving premiumization, continues to outweigh concerns over near-term price pressures.

India's vast, untapped market puts it in a unique position for growth, said Naveen Malpani, partner and consumer industry leader at Grant Thornton Bharat.

Unilever chief executive officer (CEO) Fernando Fernandez's comments reflected this confidence. "I am absolutely convinced that India will be for Unilever in the next decade what China has been for some of our competitors in the previous decade," Fernandez said at the company's 'capital markets day' event on 4 November. Unilever reported a 2.9% volume growth in July-September, while its India operations at Hindustan Unilever Ltd compared saw a 7% growth.

This bullish sentiment was echoed across global FMCG majors' September-quarter earnings calls. Cadbury's manufacturer Mondelez reported rapid expansion, with executive vice president and chief operating officer Luca Zaramella saying during an earnings call on 30 October that the company is "delivering numbers that are north of 20% growth in India—numbers that have quite frankly defeated the odds of the market. Particularly, if you compare to the rest of the world".

To capitalize on this momentum ahead of the festive season, Mondelez added about 130,000 retail outlets in India during the quarter.

Colgate-Palmolive also expressed optimism about India after facing market share erosion from local rivals such as Dabur and various startups in recent years. "India, I think, is hitting stronger now, getting the execution done well in the rural trade, getting the pricing where it needed to be, consistent, and now trying to optimize the premium part of the category," Noel Wallace, chairman, president and executive, said on 30 October.

The company Colgate-Palmolive reported a consolidated 4.6% year-over-year revenue rise in July-September, as against a 12.2% growth in its Indian arm during the quarter.

The comments follow a major leadership reset at Colgate-Palmolive's Indian arm after months of sluggish growth. Prabha Narasimhan resigned as CEO of Colgate-Palmolive India late August and was succeeded by Manish Anandani.

L'Oréal too reshuffled its top management in India in 2025 to drive growth.