Mohit Cherian Elevated To Category Director At Diageo India
Diageo India has elevated Mohit Cherian to category director, moving him up from senior general manager, brand marketing, where he headed the BII Scotch brands.
- Promotion: category director, Diageo India
- Previous role: senior general manager, brand marketing, leading the BII Scotches
- At Diageo India since February 2020
- Earlier: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, latterly as assistant vice president and head of marketing for Allen Solly
The Category Mohit Cherian Was Running
Scotch is the part of the Indian spirits market where the interesting money sits. Volume growth in alcobev is constrained by regulation, state-by-state pricing and distribution rules that make national campaigns close to impossible, so the growth that companies can actually influence comes from persuading existing drinkers to move up a price tier.
That makes Scotch marketing an unusual discipline. It is mostly about premiumisation rather than recruitment, and it is executed under advertising restrictions that rule out saying what you are selling.
What Category Director Adds
Brand marketing runs the brands. A category role sits above them and has to decide how they relate: which one takes the entry price, which one holds the premium, where the portfolio has a gap and which brand should not be defended.
Those are portfolio decisions with commercial consequences rather than communications ones, and they are the natural next rung for someone who has been running the most price-sensitive part of the range.
The Fashion Detour
The Allen Solly period is worth a line. Apparel and premium spirits have more in common as marketing problems than they first appear: both sell identity more than function, both are bought in tiers, and both depend on retail environment and occasion to justify the price difference between two products that are not objectively far apart.
Cherian has been at Diageo India since February 2020, which means his entire tenure has run through the period when the market's centre of gravity shifted upward.
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