Executive watch: Dev Amritesh plans to creatively market Dunkin' Donuts

His is life is dotted with inflection points. He went to business school because everyone around him was doing so and, moreover, he didnt know what else to do after completing industrial engineering. But it was at a classroom lecture by Santosh Sood, then with Lintas, at IMT Ghaziabad that Dev Amritesh found his calling: brands and marketing. "Within an hour of the class, I knew that this is what I wanted to do," he says.

He went on to do it well. After stints with Cadbury India and Whirlpool India, he moved on to head marketing and new product development for Dominos Pizza India at Jubilant FoodWorks. At Jubilant, Amritesh realised what taking ownership meant and how to chart the course of a new brand. "Pizzas were expensive then, and we wanted to offer a pizza for the price at which one eats chhole bhature on the street," he says. In 2007 Dominos launched Pizza Mania for Rs 35 - and that turned out to be a game-changer making pizzas accessible to a much larger segment of people. "Imagination and creativity find their best expression in marketing" became his mantra.

But when Amritesh became President and Chief Operating Officer of Dunkin Donuts India in April 2011, moving into general management from brands and marketing, he realised that imagination and creativity could be applied to any situation. His biggest challenge now is to build an organisation around an idea, of which the brand is a part. "Thats what we are trying to achieve at Dunkin. Culture and values in an organisation must also emerge from the idea that builds the brand. Products should emerge from that idea, people you hire should do best justice to the idea," he says.

Amritesh wants to make Dunkin Donuts the most attractive food brand in the country. "We were looking for scale and in India food has to be a very important part of the plan to scale up. The brand had the opportunity to do more than just Donuts," he adds. So coffee and burgers are also on the Dunkin Donuts plate at its 21 stores in the country. Amritesh says he is targeting the young adult: the 25-to-35-year-old, who has outlived the quick service restaurants but finds coffee shops too pretentious.

One golf game a week and spending time with his family make him happy. "I have two girls, four and nine. If I can get home before they have fallen asleep, its a great work day." On his mind right now is the motorbike he wants to buy soon. "I plan to ride to Leh someday."