Director, Franchise Strategy - Independent Bottlers

Overview

An individual contributor leadership role supporting and challenging the Franchise organization to translate enterprise and OU commercial strategy into market-level, executable actions across Independent Bottlers, acting as a strategic integrator across Franchise, Integrated Operations (IB), Bottlers, and OU Leadership.

What you'll do

• Partner closely with Integrated Operations (IB) teams to co-define, calibrate, and refine execution strategies based on market realities and bottler capabilities.
• Work with Franchise leadership to lead system-wide end-to-end alignment with Independent Bottlers at the local and market level.
• Act as a thought partner to Franchise Leads, stewarding rigor, clarity, and pace while alignment ownership remains with the Franchise Lead.
• Pull together data, analytics, and market insights to identify granular growth opportunities across channels, customers, and geographies.
• Translate insights into clear, actionable commercial levers that can be executed at the bottler and frontline levels.
• Use a fact-based, hypothesis-driven approach to challenge assumptions and sharpen local commercial strategies.
• Identify, frame, and conduct preliminary evaluation of strategic initiatives that support Franchise and system growth objectives.
• Own and manage the Franchise strategic project portfolio, partnering with Franchise teams, IB, and OU functions to drive outcomes.
• Ensure disciplined project governance, including clear objectives, success metrics, timelines, and accountability.
• Objectively assess successes and failures of strategic initiatives and capture learnings to feed into future strategies and projects.
• Build mechanisms to network best practices, importing and exporting scalable ideas across markets and bottlers.
• Partner with the OU Leadership Team (OULT) on business-critical, enterprise-level initiatives, bringing a system lens and execution rigor.

What you'll need

• 8+ years of progressive experience in Operations, Commercial Strategy, Franchise, or related business roles.
• Proven leadership track record, including leading teams and influencing senior leadership forums.
• Experience working in complex, matrixed, and culturally diverse environments.
• Strong analytical orientation combined with practical, execution-focused thinking.
• Mastery in developing compelling, actionable consumer and commercial insights at market level.
• Ability to convert strategy into clear execution roadmaps with measurable commercial impact.
• Strong capability to manage ambiguity, complexity, and multiple senior stakeholders across the KO System.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, particularly in bottler-facing environments.
• Extensive engagement with senior leaders across the KO System, including high-stakes discussions and negotiations with bottlers.
• Exceptional storytelling, presentation, and influencing skills, able to align diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to tailor messaging to different audiences, balancing strategic depth with operational clarity.
• Comfortable navigating sensitive, high-context situations with maturity and commercial acumen.

Details

• Location: Gurugram, India.
• Travel required: 0% to 25%.
• Relocation provided: No.
• Reports into: Vice President, Integrated Ops - Independent Bottlers.
• Job posting end date: October 30, 2026.