Brands
Britannia elevates Siddharth Gupta to vice president marketing
FMCG veteran rises after leading core biscuits and snacks brands
MUMBAI: Britannia Industries has elevated Siddharth Gupta to vice president marketing, marking the latest step in a career shaped by some of the country’s most recognisable FMCG brands. The move recognises his contributions across brand strategy, product innovation and marketing leadership.
Gupta has spent more than eight years at Britannia, steadily rising through the ranks. He currently serves as marketing head for biscuits, wafers and snacks, a role he took on in April 2025 after three years as general manager marketing. In that phase, he led core portfolios such as premium creams, crackers, marie and milk biscuits, categories that sit at the heart of Britannia’s shelves and sales.
Before that, he handled roles including senior category head for milk, marie and crackers, and category head for crackers and tiger, building experience across both legacy favourites and value-driven mass brands.
Prior to joining Britannia, Gupta spent nearly eleven years at Colgate-Palmolive, where he worked across sales, shopper marketing and brand management. His responsibilities ranged from handling the visible white, max fresh and sensitive toothpaste portfolios to leading innovation on products such as active salt healthy white and the painout tooth pain relief gel.
Over the years, he also managed toothbrush categories, modern trade initiatives and regional sales, giving him a ground-up understanding of the business, from shop floor to brand boardroom.
With this elevation, Gupta takes on a wider leadership brief at Britannia, as the company continues to sharpen its marketing playbook across biscuits, snacks and beyond.
Brands
India exports $2.5 billion worth of Apple components to China under ECMS push
Component push and policy boost turn India into unlikely supplier hub
MUMBAI: India’s electronics trade story is getting a plot twist. What was once a one-way flow from China is now starting to reverse, with exports of electronic components from India to China hitting a record $2.5 billion in FY26 so far, and projected to reach $3.5 billion by the end of the fiscal year.
At the heart of this shift is the growing manufacturing ecosystem built around Apple and its suppliers. Companies such as Tata Electronics, Pegatron, Foxconn, Salcomp, Motherson and Yuzhan Technology are driving the surge, transforming India into a key node in global supply chains.
Just a few years ago, exports of such components were negligible. Today, they are part of a rapidly expanding multi-billion dollar ecosystem, fuelled by scale, quality improvements and tighter integration with global production networks.
A major catalyst behind this growth is the government’s Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme, launched in 2025. Unlike earlier incentives focused on assembling finished devices, the scheme targets high-value components such as circuit boards, camera modules and enclosures, offering both turnover-linked and capital expenditure incentives.
The logic of exporting components to China, long seen as the “factory of the world”, may seem counterintuitive. But the shift reflects a deeper realignment. As Apple scales production in India, now accounting for roughly 25 per cent of global iPhone output, local suppliers have become competitive enough to feed into global assembly lines, including those in China.
This is also part of a broader “China+1” strategy, where companies diversify manufacturing bases to reduce geopolitical risk. India-made components are increasingly being routed back into Chinese factories to maintain global supply continuity.
At the same time, India’s domestic value addition in smartphones has climbed to around 20 per cent, signalling a move beyond basic assembly towards more sophisticated manufacturing.
While India continues to import heavily from China, the emergence of a $3.5 billion export pipeline marks a meaningful shift in direction. Electronics are now joining engineering goods and agriculture as key drivers of India’s exports to China, which are expected to cross $18 billion this fiscal year.
In short, India is no longer just assembling the world’s gadgets. It is beginning to help build them, and in some cases, even supplying the very factories it once depended on.
