S D Saravana Gughan with almost 3 decades of prolific experience in verticals like Agriculture, Food Retail, Food Services and QSR, has built up his business sinews in the areas of Farming, Operations, Sourcing, Supply Chain Management, New Product Development, Production, Manufacturing, Food Safety, Quality Assurance, Business Development, Merchandizing, Strategy, Integration, Sales, Marketing, Customer Engagement, P&L of SBU. He has involved in establishing businesses in Asia Pacific, Middle East, Europe & North America Region.
Prior to his career journey, he has done his Bachelor of Agriculture and Master of Agricultural Economics from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India followed by Post Graduate Certificate in Business Administration from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.
He started his career with Kasturi & Sons, a Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) based Fresh Produce Retail Company where he has over seen produce procurement, sales and merchandizing operation.
A couple of years later, he has joined McDonald’s India Sub-Continent Development Company (wholly owned by McDonald’s Corporation, USA) as Agricultural Specialist in their Supply Chain Team. He was one among four such employees across McDonald’s global system. Gughan has set up supply chain backward linkages for critical fresh produce and critical food products in South East Asia. He single handily introduced & ensured Iceberg Lettuce availability in India & South East Asia. He played critical role in ensuring McDonald’s Global Quality French Fries manufacturing in India.
After McDonald’s decade stint, Gughan has joined Reliance Retail (Aug 2005) directly in Chairman’s Office to establish India’s most ambitious and one of the best modern food retail chains. Being the first employee in food retail division, he has played many critical roles in establishing Reliance Fresh/Mart/Super businesses across India. He managed Food Category Vertical for 1.5 years, fruits and vegetables business unit for 3 years, Fresh Food Operations & Development for 2.5 years, Retail Corporate Strategy & Planning for a year and Fresh Food & Beverage Services for about 3 years in which he managed 60 live kitchens and 60 live bakeries and 125 protein stores across India.
After a decade stint, Gughan has left Reliance Retail (during mid 2015) and become an entrepreneur by floating a company ‘Green Kitchen Multi Specialty Food’-which is into Agri back-end integration, Fresh Food, Fine Food and Restaurant business (opened award winning Green Kitchen Multi Cuisine Family Restaurant) and simultaneously he has joined Amsterdam based 2 Michelin Star Chef to take chef’s plant-based alternate protein food concept to take it across the globe.
After spending two years with him Gughan has left and formed a company by the name of G Three Business Associates Pvt Ltd and incorporated in Mumbai (2017 March) with objectives to offer consultancy services in the areas of Agribusiness, Food & Grocery Retail, E-Grocery, Food Services, QSR and Food Manufacturing space. Also Thru G Three Hospitality and Food Services a typical South Indian Dine-in Restaurant is opened in posh area of Mumbai with the name of GUGHAN-Supreme South Indian Vegetarian Cuisine by mid of 2018. Within short span of time GUGHAN has featured in top south Indian restaurants list in Mumbai.Â
He currently advices a 360-degree sustainability company, Virenxia, headquartered in Dubai, provides innovative, reliable and systemic Sustainable Solutions for businesses in the areas of Farming, Agriculture, Animal Feed, Food, Water, Energy, Land remediation, Infrastructure, Construction, IT, Health and Wellbeing in Middle East and India. He is also in the boards of a couple of innovative upcoming companies as ‘board of director’ and one of the companies into Education, Health, Wellness, Hospitality (Resorts, Restaurants etc.), Retail, Vending Technology, Supply Chain Management etc.
As S D Saravana Gughan is well known in the Agribusiness, Food Retail, Food Service and QSR industries, he participates in national/international events/conferences/conclaves as speaker, moderator, panellist etc. Gughan was also a visiting professor in WE School of Business Management, Mumbai. He gives frequent lectures to the students of TNAU as he is an alumnus from this prestigious Agricultural Institute. He also delivers lectures to the Management Students of IIM-Ahmedabad
He has also been awarded ‘Top 50 Most Talented Retail Professionals of India’ by Asia Retail Congress at Mumbai during Feb 2014 and ‘Outstanding Achievement Award in Food & Grocery-Asia Level’ by Word Brand Congress at Singapore during July 2014.