Bata India Puts Gajesh Yadav Over Retail Marketing And VM
Bata India has named Gajesh Yadav lead, retail marketing and visual merchandising, as the footwear company works on its retail campaigns and in-store experience.
- Most recently lead, VM execution at Bata India, from August 2025
- Previously AGM, marketing, franchisee business, June 2024 to January 2026
- Earlier Bata roles: senior manager, retail marketing and visual merchandising; visual merchandising manager; marketing manager
- First joined Bata India in September 2007 as assistant manager, handling marketing POSM production and deployment
- Spent time at Cheil India as associate account director on retail activations and store launches, and began at Reliance Communications
What Gajesh Yadav Says The Job Is
Yadav announced the appointment on LinkedIn, saying he stepped into the role after working on national retail campaigns, strengthening in-store experiences and collaborating with teams across the country, and that he would focus on building stronger retail experiences and delivering commercial impact.
The phrase to hold onto is commercial impact. Visual merchandising is one of the few marketing functions where the result shows up in the same week, in the same store, on the same shelf, which is why it tends to be measured harder than a campaign is.
Why Retail Marketing And VM Sit Together
The role brings the two functions under one person after Yadav has run each of them separately at different points.
They are usually split, and usually badly. A retail campaign promises something at a national level and the store window has to deliver it in three square metres, which fails whenever the two are planned by different teams on different calendars. Putting them under someone who has done both jobs is the obvious fix, and it is rarer than it should be.
The Agency Year In The Middle
The stint at Cheil India, handling retail activations, product launch events and store launches, sits in the middle of an otherwise unbroken run at Bata.
That kind of detour usually reads as a gap on a CV. Here it is the opposite: activation work is executed to an agency’s deadline and an agency’s margin, which teaches a client-side marketer exactly how much a store rollout really costs and how long it really takes.
More on Ad Tribe People.
Advertisement
