Kapil Pal chairs United Breweries as Head of IT

Former LafargeHolcim Head - IT Service Management and Strategy, Kapil Pal will now hold the strings as IT head for United Breweries (UB). He will replace Ramakrishnan Sudarshanam who retired from the company recently.

The appointment comes at a time all industries are going through a turbulent phase with COVID-19 scare Pal started at UB on March 20, the day before the Indian government announced a curfew to combat the spread of Covid-19.

According to sources at the company, Pal’s first priority will be to arrange safe remote working for the company’s employees. Operating out of Bangalore, Pal will be reporting to the UB’s Group CFO, Berend Odink.

Prior to joining UB, Pal was with LafargeHolcim, where he had recently moved to a global role. He also headed the company’s APAC region IT services and worked with the company for 4.5 years. Pal with more than 27 years of expertise with a thorough understanding of the FMCG domain, worked at with DXC Technology (CSC), PepsiCo, Aegis (StarTek), Global Vantedge and Microland, before joining LafargeHolcim.

Pal will have to address immediately the company’s IT capabilities to take on the pandemic COVID-19 as workers are supporting from home and many of the business clients are in deep trouble.

“He will have an Herculean task to coordinate with remote working employees and make the back end safe and secure. Now the challenge will be to scale it up with existing infrastructure without much IT spend,” said an analyst.