CGRBrands Consultants Background and Experience

Background- Gaurang Govind

Who We are

33+ Years Inside Retail. Now Helping Businesses Fix What Others Only Recommend. Big gap in market for right people with right skill. We have the skill to solve the business problems.

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Gaurang Govind is a retail and business transformation leader with 32+ years of experience, including 25+ years in modern retail across India, the Middle East, and Central Asia. He is the Founder & Director of CGRBrands, a retail and business advisory firm he has run since 2017, and has held senior operating roles at Future Group (Big Bazaar), Windshield Experts (Asahi Group), Spencer’s Retail (RPG Group), and Lifestyle International/Shoppers Stop. He is also the founder of NamasteyIndiaJobs.com and a curriculum contributor to IGNOU and Ambedkar University’s retail programs.

Full About page bio

Gaurang Govind has spent over three decades inside India’s retail story — not watching it from the sidelines, but building it from the ground up. With 32+ years of overall experience, including 25+ years in modern retail, he has been part of the sector since its earliest expansion in India, and later carried that operating discipline into large-scale transformation projects across the Middle East and Central Asia.

His corporate career reads like a map of Indian retail’s own growth. As Chief Operations for Future Group’s Big Bazaar, he led East Zone operations across 55+ hypermarkets in 13 states — 19 million sq. ft. of retail space, ₹26 billion in turnover, and a workforce of 4,000+ — where he built a speed-of-execution framework with store teams that became core to how the business ran. As Chief Operating Officer at Windshield Experts (Asahi Group), he oversaw pan-India COCO and FOCO operations for an ₹80 billion group, steering a major HR salary-rationalisation project, revamping service-centre experience, and introducing a new services revenue line that hadn’t existed before. Earlier, as Business Manager at Spencer’s Retail (RPG Group), he ran regional operations worth ₹10 billion+ across hypermarkets, supermarkets, and neighbourhood stores spanning grocery, FMCG, fresh produce, bakery, apparel, and home; and as Business Head across Lifestyle International, Shoppers Stop, and Ebony Retail, he led fashion and lifestyle retail across North India during the sector’s formative years. His career began in telecom channel sales with RPG Paging and in distribution with Classic Rugs — early training in the discipline of on-ground execution that still defines how he works.

In 2017, he founded CGRBrands to bring that same operating rigour to clients directly — diagnosing problems at the Gemba, not just in a boardroom. Since then, he has led consulting and transformation projects across retail, FMCG, manufacturing, automobile, and technology sectors, in India and internationally. His international work spans a ₹2 billion fruits & vegetables warehouse project in Saudi Arabia (7% supply chain cost reduction, 10% reduction in pallet count through SOP redesign and 5S), a bakery manufacturing optimization in Saudi Arabia (SAR 1.8 million cost correction, SAR 2.5 million BOM reduction), a large Saudi retailer’s maintenance department (SAR 4.5 million cost reduction), e-commerce and quick commerce process improvements across the Middle East (7% improvement in out-of-stock rate in two months), and advanced retail training programs for senior management teams in Kazakhstan and Turkey. In India, his automobile-sector work has included building channel-partner onboarding systems and SKU master architecture for deeper data insight. Through global network partnerships with GLG (New York), Alpha Insight (Hong Kong), and Insight Alpha, he has also supported engagements for clients of BCG, McKinsey, and leading investment firms.

Beyond client work, Gaurang has built a second career in retail education. He has revised IGNOU’s BBRL retail curriculum across all three years of the program, contributed to Ambedkar University’s retail curriculum design, and taught undergraduate students at both institutions. He has designed and delivered leadership and functional training for Genpact’s senior management, mid-level managers at large consumer durable brands, and B-school students, alongside specialized programs in 5S, Six Sigma, and damage control for retail and factory teams — including designing the retail training program for Mahindra. He has published four retail courses on Udemy (Retail Management, Buying & Merchandising, Entrepreneurship, and Frontline Retail Skills in Hindi) and recorded a Coursera program on selecting open-source software for modern retail. He is also the founder of NamasteyIndiaJobs.com, which partners closely with retailers to recruit senior leadership talent.

Today, Gaurang continues to mentor young professionals entering retail, operations, and entrepreneurship, while leading CGRBrands’ consulting and training practice across India and international markets.

Credentials

BCom — Delhi University

Qualified Independent Director (MCA)

Six Sigma Green Belt & Black Belt

Operations Excellence in Retail — Certification

AI Certification — Coursiv and Claude

Certificate in Facebook Marketing

Finance for Non-Finance Executives

MBA (Marketing) — IGNOU

MCom — Meerut University

Companies worked:

Future Retail → Spencer’s → Lifestyle → Shoppers Stop → Ebony → Windshield Experts → Telecom -> Senior Retail Leadership