Urjit Patel resigns as non-executive director of Britannia Industries

Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the current non-executive director of Britannia Industries, Urjit Patel, on Thursday, 30 October 2025, tendered his resignation from the independent director role at the multinational food products brand, according to an exchange filing.

In the filing on Thursday, Britannia Industries announced that the resignation will be effective immediately from 30 October 2025.

“This is to inform you that Dr Urjit Patel (DIN:00175210), Non-Executive Independent Director of the company, has submitted his resignation from the position of Non-Executive Independent Director of the Company with effect from 30 October 2025,” the company informed the stock exchange through its filing.

Why did Urjit Patel resign?

According to the letter to the company's board of directors, Urjit Patel resigned due to his full-time assignment commitment as the Executive Director representing India and the global organisation International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Patel cited the time constraints as the sole reason behind stepping down from his independent director role.

“Due to my new full-time assignment as Executive Director representing India at the International Monetary Fund, the attendant time constraint has compelled me to tender my resignation as a Non-Executive Independent Director of the company with effect from 30th October 2025,” said Patel in his letter to the board.

Other than the above-mentioned clause, Urjit Patel did not provide any other ‘material reasons’ for his resignation. Patel's appointment in the Strategy and Innovation Steering Committee will also cease to be in effect from Thursday.

Britannia to use strength against local competition

Britannia Industries' Vice Chairman & Managing Director Varun Berry said that the company aims to take a localised approach of looking into India to stay ahead of the rivals and scale up the strategy going forward, reported the news agency PTI.

However, Varun Berry also highlighted that the company will not go into a price war with the competition, but plans to leverage its brand strength, execution, and network of 70 factories and a vast distribution spread of its product.

“And as we go forward, we are looking at seeing if we can continue with that 2 per cent, and we certainly have a line of sight to do that,” said Berry, according to the agency report.

The MD also said that the company's objective is to look at India as not just one person, but as many countries within the nation.

“We obviously are looking at each one of these regional players. Our objective is to make sure that we start to look at India not just as one country but as many countries within. One India has many Indias in it, and that is how we want to see it, and that is what is helping us take the right corrective actions from a standpoint of how to compete with some of these players,” Berry told the news agency.