Most omnichannel stories on this podcast come from founders who started online. Sridhar Balakrishnan's is the opposite, and that is exactly what makes it worth hearing.
Sridhar is Group CEO of Duroflex, brought in specifically to lead the company's transition from a family-run business into a professionally managed organisation. He oversees both Duroflex and Sleepyhead, the group's digital-first brand, which puts him in the rare position of running a legacy retail brand and a D2C challenger under one roof. He also serves as a Non-Executive Independent Director at Safari Industries.
Background – education and career
Sridhar's career is a study in scale across very different industries. He spent 17 years at Marico, rising to Chief Operating Officer for clusters across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, where he handled international P&L along with sales, business finance, and supply chain for the India business. He then moved to Star India as President and Head of Distribution, before serving as MD and CEO at ACC Limited and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for Ambuja and ACC within the Adani Group. He holds an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and a B.Tech in Electronics from IIT (BHU) Varanasi.
3 key takeaways from the episode
Legacy brands need patience, not panic. Sridhar makes the case that rushing a 50-year-old distribution business into a digital-first model usually breaks what was working.
Running two brands with different DNA requires different playbooks. Duroflex and Sleepyhead serve different customers and cannot be managed with one strategy.
Modern retail transformation is an internal problem first. Systems, incentives, and organisational structure have to change before the customer sees anything different.
