Ashutosh Bhatt from PepsiCo joins Ananta Capital as Operating Partner and Chief Growth Officer

At Pepsico, he was a home-grown talent and last was the Franchise Director for their beverages business for India.

Ananta Capital, a private equity investment platform backed by the Taparia family of Mumbai, that holds majority stake in various consumer brand businesses including the fast growing personal care company Idam Natural Wellness (owner of brands like Bella Vita Organic, Bella Vita Luxury, Brave Essentials and speciality beverage brand Bevzilla), Springwel Mattresses, Guardian Pharmacy and GNC India, has announced the appointment of Ashutosh Bhatt as its operating partner and chief growth officer.

Ashutosh is joining the Ananta platform from PepsiCo India - where he was a home-grown talent and last was the Franchise Director for their beverages business for India.

In this role, Ashutosh will work closely with Ananta’s board of directors and all portfolio companies to formulate and execute their growth plans, including growing existing distribution channels, driving brand-level synergies across channels and building systems and processes for sustainable top-line & bottomline growth.

Over the last 12 months, Ananta has been one of the most active buyout funds looking at consumer brand businesses in the mid-market space. In July 2021, it acquired a controlling stake in Idam Natural Wellness, one of the fastest growing beauty and personal care companies in the digital space in India, founded and led by Aakash Anand. Recently, Ananta acquired a majority stake in Springwel Mattresses.

“We want to drive maximum synergies among all our consumer brand businesses and setting up a team of very high quality leaders with functional expertise at the platform level has been a strategic priority for us. We are very happy to have a transformational and competent leader like Ashutosh join us as part of our core team," said Ashutosh Taparia, founder and managing partner of Ananta Capital.

Ashutosh Bhatt has 13+ years of leadership experience across global FMCG giants as well as a consumer tech Unicorn post graduating from IIM Lucknow in 2009. In his last stint with PepsiCo India at the beverages business - he was instrumental in leading some of their key business verticals like e-commerce, Modern Trade, Customer Marketing, West India and SriLanka geographies and being a key player in their path to profitable growth and market-share gain.

“Next 2-3 decades are going to be where India leads the world. For me this is an exciting opportunity to partner with phenomenal founders and management teams of brands like Bella Vita Organic, Bevzilla, Springwel and GNC India which I love as a consumer to take to the next level of growth. I am keenly looking forward to working closely with Ashutosh, Lovkesh, Aakash and the entire Ananta team“ said Ashutosh Bhatt.