Apollo Tyres has reworked two senior marketing and brand roles, bringing in a Nestlé marketer to run marketing for India and South-East Asia and moving its current marketing head to lead the Vredestein business in India.
Who is moving where
Kanika Juneja is the new Head of Marketing for India and South-East Asia, a role she began in September 2026. Abhineet Kothari, who had held that marketing role since May 2025, becomes India Business Head for Vredestein from November 2026.
The two leaders announced the changes separately on LinkedIn.
“Excited to share that I’ve begun a new chapter as Head of Marketing – India & South-East Asia region at Apollo Tyres!”
Juneja wrote in her LinkedIn post.
Juneja’s consumer brand pedigree
Before Apollo, Juneja spent more than six years at Nestlé. From March 2024 to September 2026, she led marketing for Maggi Noodles, after handling Maggi Flavour World and digital for Maggi. Earlier, she worked at GSK Consumer Healthcare India on Horlicks and nutrition brands, and began her career at ITC on Sunfeast.
Kothari’s move to a brand-building role
Kothari joined Apollo in April 2024 as Category Head for passenger vehicles before stepping up to marketing head in May 2025. His new role is to build and scale Vredestein in the Indian market. He previously worked at Paytm as AVP, Payments and spent almost nine years at Castrol in category, brand and regional sales roles.
Why this matters for marketers
For marketers watching the auto and mobility space, this is more than a routine change. It signals:
- Apollo is pairing an India-and-South-East Asia marketing role with a dedicated leader for Vredestein, giving the brand sharper focus.
- FMCG brand experience, especially Maggi’s scale, is being valued in a tyre company’s top marketing job.
- A marketer with payments and lubricants experience is being asked to scale a specialist tyre brand.
The useful lens: Apollo appears to be structuring for two distinct agendas—market-level brand building and single-brand growth—rather than asking one leader to do both.
What to do about it
Marketers can treat reshuffles like this as a signal of strategic intent. Watch whether Vredestein gets distinct positioning, whether Apollo brings more FMCG-style consumer playbooks into tyres, and how quickly Kothari’s sales and category background shows up in distribution and brand visibility.
Source: BMI Publications Private Limited
