Mid-year split for Raghu Pillai

Raghu Pillai, President and CEO (operations, strategy and business development),

Reliance Retail, will quit by mid-year. He is one of India’s best-known professionals in modern retail and was among the core team of executives hired to set up Reliance Retail in 2006. With more than 25 years of management experience, of which he spent some 15 years in retail firms, such as Spencer’s Retail and Future Group. At Reliance Retail, he had the additional responsibility of running the company’s so-called value retail division, consisting of Reliance Fresh and a number of hypermarkets.

At the end of last year, Reliance Retail undertook a major management restructuring and hired a number of executives — including CEO Gwyn Sundhagul from Tesco, Thailand — in senior roles. A few months before the restructuring, Pillai relinquished his responsibility for the value retail format. He’s not sure what he’s going to do next, but he is sure there is more to life than opening retail stores. That is refreshing blunt speak, and it’s characteristic of the man who’s known for his candor.