Growth Leads Yum! To Create Separate India Division

Yum! Brands’ success in aggressively growing its brands globally has led it to break off its India business from its Yum! Restaurants Int’l. unit and create a standalone reporting division called Yum! Restaurants India. Niren Chaudhary has been named president of the new division, reporting directly to Yum! Chairman and CEO David Novak. The new division joins Yum!-China as the Louisville, Ky., company’s only other standalone division.

In addition, Micky Pant has been promoted to CEO of YRI, replacing Graham Allan, who is retiring. Pant most recently served as president of YRI and global branding. Under Allen’s eight-year tenure, YRI opened more than 7,500 new restaurants and grew its systemwide sales from $8.4 billion to more than $15 billion.

Novak said the company is still clearly on the ground floor of global growth and emphasized that the new division underscores the potential scale of the emerging Indian market. “There is clear evidence that we are at the same stage of development as we were in China at a similar juncture in its life cycle, and I’m confident we will turn India into a major growth engine for Yum!.”

Chaudhary joined Yum! in 1994, overseeing KFC in the Netherlands and Germany. He took over India operations in 2007. Last year, Yum! opened its 100^th KFC unit in India; it also has 175 Pizza Hut stores in 34 Indian cities.

In China, it has 3,475 KFC locations and 564 Pizza Hut Casual Dining restaurants.