Birla Opus CEO Rakshit Hargave quits to lead Britannia

Biscuit-maker Britannia Ltd has appointed Rakshit Hargave as its new chief executive officer (CEO) starting 15 December, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.

Hargave resigned on Wednesday from his position as CEO of Birla Opus, the insurgent paints brand that disrupted the business long dominated by Asian Paints, Berger Paints, Kansai Nerolac and Akzo Nobel.

Hargave succeeds Rajneet Kohli, who quit Britannia in May after a nearly three-year stint to join Hindustan Unilever as executive director of the foods business. Vice-chairman and managing director Varun Berry took over as interim CEO.

That month, in an earnings call, Berry had said Britannia will appoint a new CEO in three-four months and it was actively putting a succession plan in place.

Meanwhile, Birla Opus will name Hargave’s successor in due course, the company said in an exchange filing. Himanshu Kapania, the managing director of its parent Grasim Industries, will oversee the paints business for now.

Hargave had joined Grasim in November 2021 and became the first chief executive of Birla Opus, which entered the decorative paints market in 2024. Under his leadership, Birla Opus executed its first phase of expansion with six manufacturing plants located in Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

“Rakshit has played a significant role at the Birla Opus startup stage and initial scaling of the decorative paints business,” said the interim CEO during a post-results interaction with analysts.

An IIT-BHU graduate with an MBA from FMS Delhi, Hargave previously headed Nivea’s business across Asia and ANZ and held roles at Unilever, Domino’s Pizza and Nestlé. He is credited with introducing Domino’s “30 minutes or free” delivery promise in India.

"Rakshit is a seasoned business leader with more than three decades of proven success across FMCG and paints. From shaping Nivea India into a market force to building Birla Opus from the ground up, his track record speaks to vision, resilience, and execution at scale. Britannia gains a powerful catalyst for its next phase of growth," said Manoj Menon, head of research at ICICI Securities.

In a separate exchange filing, Britannia on Wednesday announced its results for the quarter ended September 2025. The company’s total revenue from operations grew 3.7% year-on-year to ₹4,840.63 crore while net profit jumped 23% to ₹655 crore.

Like its consumer staple rivals, Britannia was expected to struggle with weather-led disruptions, a slowdown in consumer demand, and disruptions in trade due to a change in goods and services tax rates.

Paints Legacy

Birla Opus has now completed the first phase of decorative paints capex with six plants and 1,332 million litres of annual capacity.

With the commercialization of the last plant in West Bengal, the company is now the second largest decorative paints company, commanding 24% of the industry capacity, said Himanshu Kapania during a post-results interaction with analysts.

Grasim has committed ₹10,000 crore to the paints venture, with ₹9,727 crore invested as of September. At launch, Birla Opus guided to achieve ₹10,000 crore turnover within three years of full-scale operations by FY28.

According to an ICICI Securities note dated 28 September, Grasim which includes Opus reported net revenue of ₹25,847.3 crore during the first year FY24 and ₹31,563.2 crore in FY25, and is estimated to reach ₹38,309.5 crore in FY26.

In the same note, analysts said that the key takeaways from the analyst meet included the company’s rapid scale-up of distribution over the past 16–17 months, reaching around 50,000 dealers across more than 8,000 towns. The focus now shifts to deepening penetration in the existing markets and boosting counter-sales, while dealer additions will continue at a slower pace, they said.

Soumya Gupta contributed to this story.