Bata Shoe Organisation, the Swiss-headquartered family-owned footwear major that sells more than 180 million pairs of shoes annually across 70 countries, recently announced the appointment of Sandeep Kataria as its Global CEO, Bata Brands.

Kataria, previously CEO of Bata India — which sells over 49 million pairs annually here — is the first India head of the company to be elevated to the global role. In an interview with BusinessLine , he talks about what the elevation means for Indian operations, how Bata India is working its way through the “new normal”, and evolving consumer trends. Edited excerpts:

What does your elevation as Global CEO, Bata Brands mean for operations here?

It is a recognition of the competence of Indian operations, the team and an acknowledgement of maneuvering through a complex market with an innovative approach that has been executed extremely well.

Bata will also be looking at India as a very strong supply chain base for the world. We already do export a fair amount from India, but as we relook at the overall supply chain, it could mean more coming out of India.

This is also a great opportunity to bring back more learnings from overseas and implement learnings from here to other markets.

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During the Covid-19 pandemic, Bata India took a variety of initiatives to reach the consumer doorstep (like Store on Wheels) and ramped-up online presence. As people venture out, will these initiatives continue?

Some of the initiatives will continue, and we will also be relooking at these from time-to-time.

Digital or online channels are a reality and are here to stay now. People have become used to the convenience. In terms of e-commerce, our approach has not been the typical one that included deep discounting on sites. We also focused on omni-channel presence.

One of the fallouts of the pandemic is the maturing of e-commerce. From discount seeking, people are increasingly comfortable with price parity across channels that include buying offerings at MRP through e-commerce sites. We noticed it across many of the pairs sold. In fact, we believe this trend is here to stay too.

In terms of demand, patterns have changed from open-footwear to sportswear. Your comments?

We continue to be agile and listen to our consumers. One of our strengths is our varied portfolio across different price points.

As we move forward, we expect further consolidation of the trends with there being demand for sports and active footwear. Casualisation as a trend will continue and demand will start broadening out in the coming days.

Are store expansions happening in FY21?

For this year, we are not expanding the company-owned and company-operated stores in larger cities. However, expansion is being done through franchisee-model, including in smaller towns. We recently inaugurated our 200th franchisee-operated store. Our plan is to add 50 franchise stores in the September-December period.

ALSO READ: Bata India expects positive growth by June 2021

Are you planning to get into adjacencies like apparels?

We are already doing so (apparels) under the Power brand. There are three Power stores that we are experimenting with. We are not expanding these stores (Power standalone stores) as of yet. Right now, the focus is on building the brands, and we will look at the adjacencies from time to time.

We may not go deep down (with adjacencies) except in some larger stores or in the digital channels.

Apart from Power, we do have standalone stores for Hush Puppies and Naturalisers. Focus on standalone brand stores will also depend on the economies that these brands bring.

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