Nestle's Chandru to move to company's HQ in Switzerland

Chandrasekar Radhakrishnan of Nestle is set to shift base to Switzerland. Popularly known as Chandru, he is currently the senior vice president and head of communications and e-commerce at Nestle, South Asia Region.

It is learnt that Chandru will be heading a major project at Nestle's headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, aimed at driving greater efficiency in the company's marketing investments worldwide. This has great significance since Nestle globally spends an estimated 7 billion dollars on marketing every year.

In a recent interview with afaqs!, Chandru said, "For us e-commerce is not a channel; it's a business. That means e-commerce has an impact on sales, market share and on the online and offline behaviour of consumers. If you treat e-commerce as a channel it will be just a sales-oriented effort but if you treat it as a business, then it has marketing at its core."

Speaking about consumer engagement, he informed afaqs!, "We've moved from 2,500 annual contacts in 2012 to over half a million annual contacts in 2016. What used to be a high percentage of complaints has become a high percentage of queries. Complaints have not gone away, but queries have gone up. This change has been propelled by digital media and technology."

Chandru started his career in the year 1997 with Britannia as a management trainee. He went on to work with Marico and Airtel in different roles. Chandru joined Nestle as marketing manager, coffee and beverages, in 2010.

Click here to view his LinkedIn profile.