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Vipin Bhandari, chief executive officer of HyperCity Retail, will join the Sanjiv Goenka-owned food and grocery chain as deputy CEO, while Nitu Jaiswal has been named marketing head.
Jaiswal comes from Wal-Mart India, where she headed marketing, memberships and insight. The senior-level recruitment comes after the chain just posted its first operating profit.
“These hirings are to strengthen the leadership team now that we are gearing up for the next level of expansion and have high growth plans,” said Shashwat Goenka, sector head (retail) of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group and the youngest scion of Sanjiv Goenka.
Bhandari will be responsible for handling operations and will assist Spencer’s Retail president and CEO Mohit Kampani in both driving profitability and expansion, two senior industry executives said. He will report to Kampani and will join this month.
Kampani will now focus on Spencer’s foray into ecommerce, which is expected to be ready within one year with the brick-and-mortar stores acting as fulfillment centres for online orders that will be delivered the same day.
Spencer’s plans to open 60 stores over the next three years. It plans to start 15 stores in this financial year.
The retail chain is accelerating its path to profitability by shutting unviable stores, keeping a close eye on costs, focussing on increasing the average bill value of consumers and increasing sales of non-food merchandise, which has higher margins.
It plans to raise funds through an initial public offering or sell a stake once it becomes profitable.
Bhandari was earlier with Dubai-based Landmark Group, having worked across retail formats in Dubai and India. A chartered accountant by qualification, Bhandari had also been COO at Max Hypermarkets India.
Also, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group’s quick service bakery format Au Bon Pain’s CEO Sanjay Gupta has put in his papers, industry executives said. Gupta is starting his own venture or joining the family business, they said. Goenka said Gupta “is here to stay with the group” and Gupta himself denied he has quit.