Mahesh Patel

Mr. Mahesh Patel was born in Fiji. He has a Diploma in Pharmacy and is an Australian citizen.  He set-up the CPL Group in Papua New Guinea in 1987 and is the Managing Director of the company. The CPL Group comprises a chain of grocery stores under the brand name Stop and Shop, pharmacy stores branded City Pharmacy and hardware stores called Hardware Haus.

Mr. Patel is also a Director in New World Supermarkets in Fiji, which comprises 15 supermarkets. The combined turnover of his group is over US $ 70 million.

In India he started the Lifespring chain in the year 2000, which he later sold to Dr Morepen. Since then he continues to be on the board of companies in retail and customer service space.

Namita Jain
Namita Jain, an MBA from the University of Wisconsin, is an ex-Tata Administrative Service officer.  She has been associated with the retail industry for the last ten years and in her last assignment she was the CEO of Forest Essentials.  Prior to heading the merchandising function at Arcus, she was marketing head for Domino’s Pizza and was Vice-President in-charge of developing a retail strategy for the Jubilant Group who owned Domino’s Pizza, Hot Breads and the Monday2Sunday grocery outlet in Bangalore. She headed merchandising and marketing at Nanz and was head of operations at the Taj’s Khazana chain of stores.  Ms. Jain has been a speaker at various retail fora and was a regular columnist with The Financial Express newspaper.

Namita Jain has been associated with the retail industry for the last eleven years and prior to heading the merchandising function at Arcus, was marketing head for Domino's Pizza and was vice-president in charge of developing a retail strategy for the Jubilant Group who own Domino's Pizza, Hot Breads and the Monday2Sunday grocery outlet in Bangalore.  They were, for instance, working with a leading South African chicken chain to develop fast-food retail outlets in India and with a Sri Lankan grocery chain to set up a grocery project in India.

Namita also headed merchandising and marketing at Nanz and was head of operations at The Taj Group of Hotels' Khazana chain of stores where she worked with craftspeople across India to set up small, local craft cells at each Khazana outlet to demonstrate their skills to customers, both Indian and foreign, with a view to bringing artisans closer to their final customer. She headed marketing for a dotcom (briefly, given the life of all dotcoms in the past!), and created the structure and content for all the point of sale material and websites of Jubilant's group companies as well. At the Taj, where she began her career as a TAS officer, she was in the projects office and worked on various hotel and diversification projects including setting up of the Mont Blanc boutiques for the Taj in key cities. She has been a columnist with The Financial Express for over two years.