Manish Tiwary to lead Nestle India after Suresh Narayanan retires in 2025

Nestle India Ltd has said its chairman and managing director Suresh Narayanan will retire on July 31, 2025. The company has appointed Manish Tiwary as its new managing director. "The company has received a nomination from Nestlé S.A. for the appointment of Manish Tiwary as the MD of Nestlé India with effect from August 1, 2025. The proposal is subject to necessary approvals," the company says in an exchange filing.

Narayanan, an industry veteran with over 30 years of experience in this space, was instrumental in steering the company through the Maggi crisis in 2014. Before Nestle, he held leadership positions at HUL and Nestle Philippines.

Manish also has nearly three decades of experience in leading large-scale operations and strategic initiatives within the e-commerce and consumer goods sectors. Before this, Manish was the country manager of Amazon India. He joined Amazon in 2016 after a 20-year career at Unilever, where he held roles in sales, marketing, and general management across various categories and channels in India, Gulf & North Africa.

With a B.Tech in computer science and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Manish is currently a director at Amazon Digital Services Private Ltd and More Consumer Brands Private Ltd, and he will step down from his directorship on October 30, 2024.

The share price of Nestle is trading 0.10% up at ₹2,601.90 on the BSE today. The share is trading around 13% lower than its 52-week high of ₹2,777 touched on September 27, 2024. At the current price, the company's m-cap stands at ₹2,50,960.47 crore.

Nestle India reported a 27% year-on-year increase in its net profit at ₹934.1 crore in the quarter ended March 2024, as against ₹736.6 crore in the same period last year. The company’s profit beat Street estimates of ₹847 crore.

The FMCG major's revenue grew 9% year-on-year at ₹5,268 crore during the quarter under review, as against ₹4,830 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. In the January to March quarter, the domestic sales of the FMCG major stood at ₹5,021.6 crore, up 8.7%, as against ₹4,612.7 crore in the March quarter of the previous year.

Nestle’s overall performance for Q1FY25 fell short of estimates across the board. "The company achieved robust Q1FY25 growth despite challenges, driven by innovation and expanded distribution. Future prospects include continued e-commerce and retail growth, as well as planned improvements and new ventures in Nespresso and nutraceuticals," Devan Choksey Research said in its Q1FY25 consumer sector review in August.

The brokerage said in Q1 FY25, its coverage universe reported a healthy revenue growth of 7.1% YoY, surpassing our estimates by 0.1%. This reflects an uptick in demand and consumption trends, it says.