Private equity firm Samara Capital has appointed a former top executive at Colgate-Palmolive, Vinod Nambiar, as managing director of its portfolio firm More Retail Ltd, one of the largest supermarket chains in the country.
Nambiar, who has over three decades of experience in the FMCG sector, is said to have built and grown businesses across geographies spanning India, Romania, Italy, Greater China and the broader Asia Pacific region.
An alumnus of IIM-Calcutta, Nambiar held leadership assignments at Hindustan Unilever India and Colgate Palmolive before joining More Retail. He was the chairman of Colgate-Palmolive India.
“I will work closely with an outstanding team that has two strong leaders, Mohit Kampani (Deputy MD and CEO-Hyper Markets) and Sashi Gumma (CEO-Super Markets)," said Nambiar.
Sumeet Narang, MD at Samara Capital, said the firm believes Vinod’s addition to More Retail leadership team will accelerate its journey towards becoming a true customer obsessive firm with outstanding leadership at all levels.
Samara Capital and US-based e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. had agreed to buy More chain from Aditya Birla Retail Ltd in September 2018. However, the country’s anti-monopoly watchdog CCI gave nod for the transaction in January 2019.
While Samara holds a 51% stake, Amazon has the rest in Witzig Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd, a joint venture between the two parties that run the operations of the company currently.
ABRL, part of diversified conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, runs 523 supermarkets and 20 hypermarkets under the More brand, its website shows. It is the fourth-largest supermarket chain in the country after Reliance Retail Ltd, Future Group and D-Mart.
