Colgate-Palmolive India will begin December with a new marketing chief who already knows the building. Akash Parekh, currently senior director, marketing for Asia Pacific, steps up as executive vice president, marketing, from 1 December 2026. He succeeds Gunjit Jain, who signs off on 30 November after more than 18 years with the company.
Jain’s resignation letter, dated 22 October, says he is leaving for a professional growth opportunity outside the company. He used the letter to thank the board and leadership team for their backing during the long tenure.
A succession built on continuity
Parekh’s appointment is not an outside reset. He has been with Colgate-Palmolive since 2009 and has accumulated nearly 17 years of company experience across India, North America and Asia Pacific. In his current role, he leads regional marketing strategy in APAC.
Before joining Colgate, Parekh began his career at Nielsen in 2006. He holds an MBA in marketing from the Mumbai Educational Trust and has completed the Global Leadership Development Program at Stanford University. His broader two-decade career spans brand strategy, commercial execution, market expansion and consumer insights.
A bigger budget to steward
The handover arrives as the marketing function is spending more, not less. In the September quarter of FY27, Colgate-Palmolive India’s advertising expenditure was Rs 314.82 crore, up from Rs 225.10 crore in the year-ago period. Net sales grew 12.2 per cent year on year to Rs 1,692 crore.
For marketers, those numbers frame the new role: brand-building investment is rising, and the next chief will be expected to connect that spend to commercial outcomes.
Why this transition matters
- Continuity: An internal successor with experience across India, North America and APAC can make a smooth handover easier when a long-serving leader exits.
- Timing: Higher ad budgets and double-digit sales growth raise the bar for campaign effectiveness.
- Profile: A background in brand strategy, commercial execution and consumer insights links brand work to business results.
How to read the move
A simple way to evaluate marketing leadership transitions is to look at three Cs: continuity, commercial context and cross-market perspective. Parekh checks all three. The open question is creativity: insiders are good at protecting brand equity, but the task is to keep campaigns distinctive while scaling ad spend behind premiumisation.
For companies with strong brand portfolios, cross-market leadership experience can act as an internal training ground for the top marketing seat. It brings fresh comparisons from other geographies without losing brand memory. The challenge is that premiumisation is not only a pricing or distribution story; it is also a creative and media-mix story. If the extra advertising rupees are deployed behind higher-value products, success will show up in margin, trial and repeat purchase rather than reach alone.
For marketing professionals watching this change, the early signals to track are product-mix shifts, media allocation and whether the new EVP concentrates spend on fewer, sharper brand platforms.
Source: Indian Television Dot Com
