P Venkatesalu

P Venkatesalu is the managing director of Tata Group’s Trent Limited, which owns fast-fashion brand Zudio, department store chain Westside, and operates hypermarket chain Star. Venkatesalu has been instrumental in the rise of Zudio, a brand launched in 2016 that has grown to 963 stores in 2026, up from 233 four years earlier. Targeting value-conscious consumers with a large presence in smaller cities, the youth-focussed brand offers merchandise mostly priced below 1,000 rupees (roughly $10). In the 2025 financial year, Zudio crossed the $1 billion annual revenue mark, a milestone that industry reports have described as a first for an Indian apparel brand.

Venkatesalu has overseen Trent’s partnerships with Inditex in India for brands, including Zara and Massimo Dutti. Under his stewardship, Westside, which offers its own branded fashion and home products, has grown to 300 stores across 97 cities in early 2026, adding 100 in just four years. Venkatesalu also oversees Trent’s smaller fashion brands: Samoh, Utsa and Burnt Toast, as well as cash-and-carry stores under Booker Wholesale. Since taking over as chief executive in Oct. 2021, Venkatesalu has seen Trent’s revenue from operations jump fivefold to 19,701 crore rupees ($2.1 billion) in the 2026 financial year. In 2024, he was appointed managing director, after serving as executive director and chief executive since 2021.

Venkatesalu entered the salt-to-steel conglomerate in 2001 through Tata Administrative Services, the group's in-house leadership programme, starting at Tata Sons, the Tata Group’s holding company. He joined Trent in 2008 as the chief financial officer, when the company was a small part of the group, primarily running Westside. He worked closely with Tata scion Noel Tata, then the CEO of Trent, who laid the groundwork for the company’s rise as a major retail player. Venkatesalu is an alumnus of Symbiosis Institute of International Business and the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School.