02 Apr 2024
Beardo CEO takes a one-year sabbatical while other key officials quit in recent months. Acquired by Marico in June 2020 Beardo is seeing a lot of upheaval in its key roles with CEO, on a sabbatical and at the same time Head of Finance and Operations leaving the company.
During this one year when Sujot is away, his role will be divided between Siddharth Vaya, Chief Business Officer of Beardo, and Koteshwar LN, EVP and Head of Digital First Businesses at Marico. They will lead Beardo operations.
Sujot has spent more than 13 years in Marico and was made the CEO of the newly acquired Beardo in 2020. However, in these three years, many of the key executives who helped with the growth of Beardo have left the company. In the last three months, Beardo’s Head of Marketing Darayus Mehta and Head of Finance and Operations, Ketan Jain have quit. In September 2023, Sanjay Mishra, COO of Marico India who was pivotal in the Beardo deal also quit. Ketan has joined Renee, which was founded by Beardo Co-founder Ashutosh Valani, while Darayus has started his own jewellery brand.
Marico said in a statement to Moneycontrol that the resignations of these officials are not interlinked and were done at different periods of time. Each of them wanted to pursue opportunities outside after spending a significant amount of time in the organisation. The brand has been doing well financially and, at the same time, cemented its presence in the male grooming space in India.
This upheaval in the company has come at a time when there is fierce competition in the D2C space where many of the players are now looking at offline sales as all the online mediums have reached a plateau. Many of them are also planning to go in for a hybrid model having a mix of both the channels. The company reported a loss of INR 6.1 Cr in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) as against a net profit of INR 75.5 Lakh in the previous fiscal. However, revenue from operations jumped 12.3% YoY to INR 106.6 Cr in the year ended March 2023.
