Leaders & Innovators

Ms. Nina Lekhi, the Founder MD and Chief Design Curator of Baggit, is an accidental entrepreneur, who pursued her creative hobby of designing bags for the No. 1 Ladies' Handbags brand in India. It all started with Rs 7,000 borrowed from her mother after she failed in her first year of college. Baggit is perhaps the only leading Brand to persist with the difficult task of making completely in India, rather than importing from China as most competing brands do. This commitment and execution of strategy has been demonstrated to a number of consumer product companies that India can compete and beat Chinese products in India and internationally too, after building a dominant presence in India.

Nina recognizes the fact that employment opportunities for unskilled labourers with very little education are the primary need for the development of weaker sections of the Indian population. Her determination to make it in India at all costs is arising out of this primary concern. She is willing to sacrifice easy profits for herself by importing from China like other competitors, but unwilling to waver from making in India for the last 35 years, whereas “Make in India” has become fashionable only in the last 5 years. Nina has always supported responsible fashion consumption and to that extent, Baggit offers classical fashion designs that are high quality, highly durable and ever-lasting rather than trendy fashion styles that come and go every season. In addition, the company

The company has also launched “Enoki”, a highly durable mass brand addressing the biggest “ value for money” market segment. This brand will demolish the myth that quality branded products have to be necessarily expensive and reduce the burden of discarded products of poor quality, unsustainable and cheap products currently being bought by the mass segment.

Nina Lekhi has faced many ups and downs in the business over the last 35 years and resilience is one. of her significant personality trait. Her biography, titled “Bag it All, " inspires women to follow their dreams and be resilient. The key message of the biography is that “if I can do it, so can you”. She is a role model for countless women entrepreneurs and other ordinary women who anyways are doing extraordinary things in life by balancing their work and home lives. In fact, the Baggit brand celebrates such ordinary women and encourages them to follow their hearts and dreams and be resilient.

Nina is transforming Baggit from a promoter-driven company to a professionally managed company with aspirations to be a responsible global fashion company. From controlling every aspect of the business to delegating authority and learning to manage through an inspirational style of management has not been an easy process for her. However, her commitment to follow through on the difficult transformational journey is inspirational for other promoter-driven companies that are struggling to scale up, because of the changes required in leadership style.

Nina can be called the most experienced and valuable Designer of Ladies' handbags in India with significant winners over the last 40 years. She loves visiting the stores selling Baggit merchandise every weekend and interacting with customers. Baggit brand incorporates all the customer wants and needs to be gleaned through personal interactions with thousands of customers over the years. Customers vouch for the Quality, Durability and satisfaction of possessing and using Baggit handbags over the years. However, the Brand captures the specialness of the “Atrangi” personality trait of Nina Lekhi.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninalekhi/

Ramesh has rich cross Industry, and cross-geography experience of over 25 years across high complexity, intensely competitive industries such as FMCG, Retail and telecom and now Media. He has been in leadership roles across companies such as Hypercity Retail, Future Group, Airtel and Spencers leading change and transformation in mostly turn around and start-up situations. Prior to re-joining HT media recently as the CEO for the Radio and digital audio businesses he was group CEO at food and beverage startup Wingreens farms. He has also been the CEO, Small Format Retail with Future Group and held held senior management roles at Pepsico, Colgate Palmolive and ITC.

With a proven ability to drive businesses through conceptualizing and evolving strategy, people and cultural transformation, digital innovation and augmenting & streamlining traditional and new age Go to Market Strategies.

He is very good at adapting to new situations and business environments and struggling with legacy issues. He looks at technology and innovation as the key growth tools, making him click with the young and energetic teams around him.

Arun is a first-generation IT entrepreneur with almost 50 years of association with the industry. After completing his engineering in Computer Science from

After leaving DCM Data Products as the Regional Head of Western India He joined International Computers India Manufacturers(ICIM), an Indian subsidiary of International Computers Limited, UK as Vice President, Marketing. Arun founded and served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of ICIM International Inc. (Zensar Technologies) building it from scratch in 1991. He developed lower-cost offshore resources, leveraging economic and global development cycles to ICIM’s benefit, thereby consolidating the parent company’s leadership role in outsourcing services.

After leaving Zensar in 1999, he started his own venture, iCelerate Inc. in 2000 as President & CEO. After iCelerate’s acquisition in 2007, he helped a few other ventures in the valley to scale and grow. In 2009 he launched Runa Inc. which was acquired by Staples in 2014.

After supporting few other startups in the valley till 2017, he has been working with few not for profit organizations in advisory capacity. Apart from achieving success in his own career Arun has been instrumental in helping hundreds of young professionals in shaping their careers through his mentorship and leadership.  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-tolani-8550aa1/

With over thirty years as a corporate executive in the retail industry, Evelyn has broad-based international experience in luxury, mass and speciality retail; product and business development across the spectrum of the fashion, food and retail services.  

She is the founding partner and President of Retail Resource Partners Inc., an independent boutique advisory firm working with both niche and global brands considering entry into the North American Market.  They evaluate opportunities, thorough comprehensive research, market analysis and if required, the development of sales and marketing strategy.  The group's extensive network allows them to build strategic partnerships supporting company growth.  

Her passion is idea generation and innovation; identifying opportunities that connect like-minded individuals and businesses; creating opportunities and destinations that drive traffic and memorable customer experiences. 

She has worked with such notable companies as Marks & Spencer, in the UK and Canada, Holt Renfrew (Selfridges Group) and The Hudson’s Bay Company where she was a Senior Merchant as well as leading the business development team, introducing some exciting new business ventures.  This included multiple innovative pop-ups and concessions, including the launch of Kleinfeld Bridal in Canada and the development and execution of both the Food Halls and restaurant strategy for Hudson’s Bay and Saks Canada.   

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelynreynolds/

Ranjan Sharma has been working with Bestseller India since August 2012 as CIO and Head of Supply Chain and has over 26 years of experience. He started his career in June 1996 with Futurecom as Product Manager and was responsible for handling IT infrastructure sales to Corporate Houses of brands like IBM, Compaq and HCL. He was also responsible for developing a team for sales and support.

In July 2001 he moved to Vishal Retail Ltd. as Store Manager and became Zonal Operation head and subsequently Head of IT. Here he was responsible for setting up long-term IT and Supply chain strategy. In his last stint before joining Bestseller, he was working with Future Group. He has worked at various profiles like Head of SAP Practise, Head of Packaged applications and Head of IT and was responsible for - Building SAP Retail team.   He

Ranjan is an alumnus of the American International University of Management & Technology and IIM Kozhikode.

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranjan-sharma-78515810/

Mark is a career retailer who spent his formative years with Marks and Spencer in the UK. In 2008 he was given the opportunity to spend time in India to set up Indian operations. What followed was a six-year journey, firstly with Marks and Spencer and Reliance and then with Hypercity and the Rahejas. “The experience was far better than any business school,” and India left a wonderful lasting impression not just on Mark, but the whole family. A stint with Alshaya in the Middle East followed and today Mark is working with a PE-backed supermarket chain in Egypt and other consulting roles. 

His leadership style has been to empower those closest to the customer, to focus on clearly understanding a customer’s needs & relationship with a brand and then to build a profitable retail operating model. “So often in retail, the customer and the business basics get lost, until it’s too late.”  “Retail is a simple business, but a complex process, just ask any Kirana owner”.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-ashman-62b5a210

Piyush is a digital evangelist with a passion for transforming businesses with the use of technology. With over two decades of experience working with global consumer and retail companies, he has an excellent track record of delivering results and creating value across organizations. His vision is to create innovation-focused digital strategies to maximize today’s opportunities and prepare organizations for future disruptions. His passion for working with startups and innovation-led companies has given him the edge to create digital assets for organizations with the use of the latest technologies like Analytics, Cloud, and Artificial Intelligence. He has been a widely recognized leader in digital transformation and has been a much-wanted speaker at over 100 global events. He is an avid writer and his thought leadership is published in multiple magazines and portals. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pchowhan

BSN is one of the first leaders of modern retail in India who went on to build one of the leading retail conglomerates and inspired and guided generations to take up retail as a professional career. He led the creation of the Retailers Association of India (RAI) to bring the industry together and create effective representation in govt policy-making and recognition as an industry sector. He founded TRRAIN, Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India, dedicating himself towards improving the lives and livelihood of the retail workforce in India. He shall continue to be the guiding force for generations to come across this industry.

https://www.trrain.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nagesh-b-s-68a2873a

Vishal Kapil has played a very important role in the technology transformation journey of Indian retail in many ways. He has now decided to move to another brand outside India for newer experiences and challenges! 

The key lesson Vishal learnt during his sales stint was to listen to his customer’s needs with empathy and understand their needs! This helped him to understand the connection between business needs and technology. He still carries that habit in the leadership role and this is what makes him one of the progressive CIO of the retail industry

Bijou Kurien brought in his learnings from his Unilever experience of creating demand in rural India to build a brand like Titan from scratch from 1987 onwards. Following the success of Titan watches, he grew Titan as a powerhouse of lifestyle products during his two decades with them. Following that, he rolled out the overall strategy for the lifestyle retail business at Reliance Retail from its inception.

He is an exceptional keynote speaker at Retail events, He has been awarded Retail CEO o the year 2013 by ET Now and Retail Leader of the Year by World Retail Congress in 2021. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkurien/