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Varun Mitra joins Nestlé as head of digital, data and analytics for supply chain. The former Haleon, Accenture and Asian Paints executive, an IIM Mumbai alumnus, takes charge of supply chain technology for South Asia 2 hours ago October 10, 2026 From coding a government grants portal as an intern to running digital, data and analytics for a food giant's supply chain: Varun Mitra has taken the long road and made every mile count. In October 2026, he started as head of digital, data and analytics, supply chain, at Nestlé, a South Asia role based on-site. He arrives after five years and seven months at Haleon in Delhi, where he rose to general manager, IT, from July 2022. Mitra describes himself as a business-savvy digital transformation professional with experience across consumer goods, retail and consulting. He has worked with marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, sales and HR business verticals, and says he is extremely strong at comprehending functional and technical complexities and aligning them with business objectives. His notable accomplishments include digital transformation for GSK Consumer and Asian Paints across business verticals, process re-engineering and BI enablement across supply chain, sales force automation and delivering AI and advanced analytics scenarios. He holds a bachelor's degree in information technology and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Mumbai. The Haleon years show the scale of the brief. As general manager, IT (commercial, finance, QSC and infrastructure), Mitra led a team of application subject matter experts, programme managers and IT service delivery executives, with responsibility for local and global IT applications across the Indian sub-continent and the Asia-Pacific region. His portfolio spanned SAP (P2P, O2C, R2R), DMS, SFA and the retailer app, Veeva SFDC CRM, digital marketing tools covering commerce and marketing cloud for D2C, an enterprise data lake on Azure, and non-SAP applications such as HRMS, MDM and company portals including KMS, LMS, CMS, VMS and the ALM tool. Before that, from April 2021 to July 2022, he was senior manager, commercial applications and M&A tech lead. He delivered the GSK and HUL merger from a technology standpoint, covering the acquisition of Horlicks and Boost by Unilever. He also drove media efficiency and effectiveness, on and off platform, delivered HCP and pharmacy engagement, and streamlined the omni-channel consumer experience through data-driven planning and execution across traditional markets and new-age ecommerce and D2C marketplaces. At Accenture, as digital strategy manager for consumer goods from December 2019 to April 2021 in Gurugram, Mitra strategised ecommerce channel creation and delivered expansion to about $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue within 12 months for a leading CPG conglomerate. He also converted about $2 million in consulting revenues across large-scale transformation programmes, delivering about four times the business value. The supply chain thread runs deep. At Asian Paints, from January 2016 to December 2019 in Mumbai, he was systems manager, SCM, and enterprise analytics lead, handling large-scale business transformation in sales force automation, supply chain and manufacturing analytics, and master data harmonisation for vendor, product, customer and pricing using SAP MDG. At SAP, from June 2014 to January 2016 in Bengaluru, he was a business process consultant, certified in order fulfilment (ERP sales and distribution) in September 2014, tackling demand planning, S&OP process re-engineering and supply orchestration. His early record is equally telling. As student placement coordinator at IIM Mumbai from June 2012 to March 2014, he was the single point of contact for over 60 organisations. As a summer intern at ITC Limited in 2013, he identified pain points hitting the vehicle utilisation KPI for ITC's TM&D and built a macros-enabled Excel model to improve vehicle utilisation and fill rate. As an SAP technical analyst at Infosys from June 2010 to June 2012 in Pune, he rolled out R/3 for a leading US FMCG organisation across Latin America and the EU, developing RICEFWs across SD, MM, PP and FI-CO modules. Earlier still, he freelanced as a web designer at Miranj in Chandigarh from May 2008 to June 2010, interned at The Energy and Resources Institute building the Department of Biotechnology's grants and funds disbursement portal, and, as a research intern at IIT Delhi, delivered a multimodal biometric recognition system under Prof M Hanmandlu, earning the highest possible recommendation. The pattern is plain. Mitra has moved from code to consulting to corporate leadership, always close to the supply chain and always close to the numbers. At Nestlé, that mix of SAP depth, analytics muscle and commercial instinct now meets a South Asia supply chain waiting to be made smarter.

Nestlé increases Piltti production at the Turku plant - baby food is no longer exported from the plant to Russia. Nestlé has been one of the few international large companies that have continued operations in Russia. Baby food exports from Turku ended in September. Nestlé has stopped baby food exports to Russia from the Turku plant - at the same time, exports to Ukraine also ended. Glass jar products intended for 4-5-month-old babies from the Turku baby food plant ended up on the Russian and Ukrainian markets. According to Nestlé Finland CEO Niina Koskinen, exports ended in September. "No baby food is going to Russia from here at the moment, nor will the new pouch format be going either," Koskinen said at the opening of the new production line opened at the Turku plant. According to Koskinen, exports to Russia and Ukraine have been a small part of the plant's total production. "It has been a drop in the ocean, but significant for the plant, because as the glass volume has shrunk in the market, a small additional volume has helped keep the line running at full shifts." According to Koskinen, ending the exports has been a decision by the Nestlé Group, and it has no connection to the Turku plant's investment or the new production line. Nestlé has been one of the few international large companies that have continued operations in Russia since the war in Ukraine began. Multi-million investment in the Turku plant. Nestlé opens a new production line at the Turku baby food plant. The new line brings, alongside Piltti glass jars, new tear-open stand-up pouches and capped single-serve pouches. The new products will reach store shelves next spring. The capped fruit single-serve pouches already in the selection have been brought to Finland from plants in Poland and Spain. The single-serve pouches now being launched are new in the company's baby food range. The investment in the Turku baby food plant is worth approximately 15 million euros. With the new line, the plant's total baby food production capacity will increase by about 50 percent. According to Nestlé Finland CEO Niina Koskinen, the final production volume depends on how well the products sell. "Consumer research shows that people want baby food for new occasions. Families are on the move a lot these days, and not every meal takes place at the home table," Koskinen says. The Turku baby food plant currently produces more than 40 million glass jars of Piltti baby food annually. The new packaging formats do not replace glass; rather, the single-serve pouches come alongside the existing ones. "It would be quite hard to believe that glass would disappear in the near future. Both packaging formats have their place in the market," Koskinen says. The new production line does not add jobs at the Turku plant; instead, the line runs with the existing staff. Traditional flavors remain. Despite the new packaging formats, the content of the baby food remains largely unchanged. Spaghetti bolognese, fish products and salmon are still enduring favorites. Domestic baby food has been made at the Turku plant since 1952.