Nine leadership changes from the week of 17 August, dated and sourced. Three of them are returns. Colgate-Palmolive hired back a man who had spent thirteen years there before leaving in 2018. NDTV hired back an executive who had worked there before running a competitor. HDFC Life reappointed the chief executive it has had since 2018 for another five years. Indian boards are usually accused of the opposite habit, of chasing the outsider with the bigger name. This week they bought familiarity, and in Colgate’s case they bought it off a rival’s payroll. Every person named here is now on our watch list.
18 Aug
DeHaat cofounder Adarsh J Srivastava was appointed chief executive of Honest Farms, the group’s pesticide-free packaged food brand, alongside a ₹35 crore pre-Series A round led by OTP Ventures. He co-founded DeHaat in 2012 and moves from building the parent to running the spinout. Source: Inc42, 18 August 2026.
19 Aug
HDFC Life received IRDAI approval for the reappointment of Vibha Padalkar as managing director and chief executive for five years from 12 September, settling the succession question at one of India’s largest private life insurers. She has run it since 2018. The regulator also cleared Niraj Shah as executive director and CFO. Source: CNBC-TV18, 19 August 2026.
19 Aug
Kolte-Patil Developers, the Blackstone-backed Pune developer, appointed Hrishikesh Parandekar as chief executive from 24 August. He joins from Alpha Alternatives, after earlier roles at McKinsey, Morgan Stanley and Karvy. Source: Business Standard, 19 August 2026.
19 Aug
Avanade, the Accenture and Microsoft joint venture, named Achal Kataria as chief executive for India, a market that supplies much of its delivery capacity. He arrives with more than three decades across technology services and global operations. Source: People Matters, 19 August 2026.
20 Aug
360 ONE appointed Abhishek Bhalotia as Chief Growth & People Officer, covering business development across its wealth, asset management and capital businesses as well as the group’s people agenda. He arrives after three decades with the Kotak Group, most recently as national business head of Kotak Bank’s private banking business. Source: exchange4media, 20 August 2026.
21 Aug
Colgate-Palmolive (India) named Manish Anandani managing director and chief executive from 28 September, and moved Prabha Narasimhan, its MD and CEO for the past four years, to executive vice president for marketing in Colgate-Palmolive’s Asia-Pacific division. Anandani joins from Kenvue, where he was managing director for India and South Asia, and had earlier spent thirteen years at Colgate-Palmolive from 2005 to 2018. Source: exchange4media, 21 August 2026.
21 Aug
NDTV appointed Hersh Bhandari brand advisor and head of NDTV CoLab, the network’s branded-content unit. He was most recently chief executive of Republic World, and had worked at NDTV earlier in his career. Source: afaqs!, 21 August 2026.
22 Aug
Jain Resource Recycling, the NSE and BSE listed metal recycler, appointed Kajal Mayur Saiya as an independent woman director and Prakash Kumar Behra, a retired principal commissioner of customs and GST, as an independent director, both with immediate effect and subject to shareholder approval. The two seats had been vacant since resignations on 3 and 19 August. Source: the company’s own filing to the exchanges, 22 August 2026.
23 Aug
HT Media appointed Prashant V Singh editor and head of LiveMint and LiveMint Hindi. He joins from Business Today, where he was deputy executive editor, and was earlier senior editor for business at Times Network. Source: exchange4media, 23 August 2026.
Movements is a factual, dated record of leadership change in Indian business, published weekly.