Retail Leadership Summit - RLS

Rajeev Krishnan

Rajeev Krishnan

Managing Director & CEO, SPAR Hypermarket

Rajeev has 30 years of Global retail and consumer background, 21 in the US and 9 in India. His journey with Target, Wal-Mart & McKinsey have helped him develop well rounded Global Consumer knowledge and retail domain expertise. His experiences and skills developed over 3 decades have delivered cutting edge results in both consumer goods and retail businesses.

As a Senior Expert/Advisor for McKinsey's retail and consumer practices, he helped drive and develop these areas through both strategy and execution for clients across consumer functional area and other retail formats.

Rajeev was the Executive Vice President and Business Head of Retail Operations for India at Bharti Retail, which was part of the Bharti Wal-Mart join venture, he was responsible for heading the retail operations of over 130 stores across multiple formats. Rajeev was a part of the senior executive team that set up the retail joint venture and was responsible for the retail business and operations across hypermarket, compact hypermarket and supermarkets formats in India.

Prior to this, he was the Group Vice President at Target Corporation in the US. Rajeev has held multiple positions in his 18 year career at Target such as Group Director, District manager, Store Manager and Executive Team Leader (Stores). During his career at Target he had the opportunity to work with McKinsey on developing best practices, develop and roll out the Super Target Stores.

This experience has helped hone his expertise in global consumer knowledge. Working up the retail food chain through different stores formats, Rajeev has developed a much wider scope, perspective and invaluable understanding of both the consumer and retail industries.

Rajeev heads the Spar India business in the capacity of Managing Director and CEO of Max Hypermarket (Dubai-based Landmark Group) . Rajeev and his team have embarked on a journey to deliver a distinctive retail experience for their customers with a focus on value, creativity, merchandising and innovation to make the customer experience more engaging and exciting.

Recently, he has been recognized as one of India's Most Trusted CEOs of 2018 by the World Consulting & Research Corporation (WCRC) Asia. He was awarded for showing exceptional leadership, enabling the business to achieve growth and success through his passion, commitment and trust in his employees.

Rajeev is also felicitated as “India’s Inspirational Leader 2018-2019” in London under the 3rd edition of Global Indian Excellence Summit.

Currently, Max Hypermarket operates 21 SPAR stores across nine cities in seven states, including Bengaluru, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Chennai with the average store size being 50,000 sqft and is going thru its fastest pace since inception.

SPAR Hypermarkets, operated in India by Max Hypermarkets, has presence in over 40 countries with over 12000 stores. SPAR hypermarkets and supermarkets in India grew following an agreement between the Dubai-based Landmark Group’s Max Hypermarkets India Pvt. Ltd. and SPAR International.

Retail Leadership Summit - RLS