Today, Nikhil Upadhye takes charge as the new managing director, Benetton India. The announcement was recently made by the Benetton Group that Upadhye will be stepping into the shoes of Ramprasad Sridharan who is moving on to explore other opportunities. This is Upadhye’s second stint with Benetton India, having earlier served as commercial director from February of 2018 to March of 2025.
An alumnus of the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, Nikhil Upadhye has also studied leadership and strategy at London Business School, as a Sloan Fellow.
In the initial years of his career, he served as product manager VAS-Delhi, at Birla Management Corp. (Idea Cellular), from 2001 to 2004.
In April of 2004 he joined Reebok as area sales manager, Mumbai. Just over a year and a half into this role, he was elevated to business manager-East and worked out of Greater Kolkata area for over a year. He then returned to Mumbai as business manager-West for over a year before being promoted to general manager-retail operations in 2009. By 2010 he had reached the position of national sales and retail manager, working out of Gurugram. Till May of 2012 he successfully developed strategy and delivered top line and bottom-line targets of the company, leading a team of over 140 sales and customer service professionals.
From 2012 to 2014 he was associated with Tata International Wolverine Brands, as national sales and retail head.
Welspun Group roped him in for the role of general manager, B2B sales in September of 2014. He worked out of the UK for a while before returning to Mumbai after accepting the role of assistant vice president, Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Nikhil Upadhye co-founded Lemon Head Prints in August 2016 and spent the next year and a half based out of London, driving the strategic direction of the startup.
His association with Benetton Group began in February of 2018. For over seven years he headed the retail business of the Group for the Indian Subcontinent, as commercial director-head.
He moved on to join Ola Electric as vice president-sales, in March of 2025.
Now, he is back at Benetton India, bringing over two decades of experience across the sports, footwear and fashion industry.
