Ikea India appoints Susanne Pulverer as first woman CEO
PremiumPulverer takes over from Peter Betzel, who will take up his next assignment within Ikea
NEW DELHI : Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has appointed Susanne Pulverer as its new and first woman Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) for its India business.
Pulverer takes over from the outgoing India CEO Peter Betzel, who will move on to his next assignment within the Ikea Group.
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Prior to her role as Ikea India’s top boss, Pulverer held the position of group business risk and compliance manager at the Ingka Group. Pulverer, who joined Ikea in 1997, has worked at the company in different roles. This is her third stint in India.
“India is a prioritised market for Ingka Group. Peter and the team have done a truly commendable job of introducing Ikea in India as a purpose-led brand, expanding the omnichannel presence across cities, strengthening local sourcing and retail competence, and so much more," Pulverer said in a statement.
Ikea further plans to establish itself as a meaningful brand in the country keeping its long-term 2030 commitments in focus.
Pulverer started out as environmental manager for the Ikea Group and moved on to Ikea of Sweden, the product development company, where she held various roles in different business categories. She then moved to India in 2007 to head the purchasing function for Ikea South Asia.
Before joining Ikea India once again in 2017, Pulverer was managing director at Ikea Communications, the in-house agency of Ikea, for 5 years. In her last role in India, she led market development for Delhi-NCR.
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Pulverer takes over from Betzel who took charge of the company’s India operations months before the retailer opened its maiden store in India in the city of Hyderabad.
In an interview with Mint, Betzel said Ikea continues to remain invested in India for the “long-term." India will be one of the fastest growing Ingka markets with the most amount of investment commitment from the group. Ingka Group is the largest Ikea franchisee that operates 465 Ikea stores globally.
Ikea landed approval to open stores here under the single-brand retail investment policy in 2012—promising to bring in Rs10,500 crore worth of investments into the market to open stores and warehouses.
“This is the country where we would like to be for the long term," Betzel said.
Apart from Hyderabad, Ikea has a large format store in Navi Mumbai. It opened a City Store in Mumbai and more of these are in the pipeline. It has also ramped up online sales and now customers in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Vadodara can shop online through website or the Ikea app.
Ingka Centres, part of the Ingka Group, also plans to open two separate shopping centres in India—both in the Delhi-NCR region.
“We (India) are the country with the biggest expansion portfolio in the world. To be fair, other countries already have many stores and online as well. But if you look at the total investment portfolio (in India) we are the biggest portfolio in the world," Betzel said.
Earlier this year, Ikea India received ₹850 crore of investments from Ingka Group as part of its strategy to deepen its presence in this growing market.
Meanwhile, the company has been batting for more flexible policies in India. Betzel said it will continue to press for ease of doing business as well as local sourcing norms.
“No country is really easy to land (in) with big plans…there is always groundwork which has to be done. But there's a bigger understanding now from many stakeholders… When it comes to sourcing—we have been sourcing here for 30 years and source locally a lot today. But we also said that we would like to support the direction wherein India can be playing a big role when it comes to furniture production and manufacturing not only for Ikea, but maybe for many more countries," he said.
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