Bio

Digital and Commercial leader with an outstanding record of leveraging technology to deliver commercial growth and drive exceptional business impact across different functions at IKEA, adidas, GE, Honeywell and Tata. He is a visionary leader who is adept at bridging the borders between business and tech and has a keen sense of applying this to define and execute a strategy that delivers large-scale business transformation. He has led internal and virtual teams to highly productive, successful results and orchestrated the transformation from a traditional legacy organization to Agile Product teams ➤ As Chief Digital and Technology officer he is end-2-end responsible for all digital and technology at Ingka IKEA (Retail business at IKEA with revenue more than 40+bn, 392 stores worldwide, online business of approx. 8+bn and presence in more than 32 countries around the Globe). Group digital is a bit more than 5k+ FTEs and in this role he has accountability for transforming from physical retaining to omnichannel retailing and creating seamless experience for the many customers and co-workers. ➤ Prior as the head of Digital Sales at adidas and as (interim) head of Digital Product Engineering, Parag was responsible for enabling online and offline experiences for consumers and customers in Direct to Consumer (eCommerce and Retail) and Wholesale. He led the creation and execution of the strategic roadmaps for delivering across our eCommerce platforms (4+bn in 2020), B2b Commerce (approx. 650mn EUR in 2018), enabling Omni capabilities across channels (target 250+mn EUR 2020) and building the Digital Store of tomorrow ➤ Prior as CIO Europe, he led IT for adidas Europe (business of approx. 5+ billion across 25+ countries). Parag had complete accountability for Operations and defining + executing the IT Roadmap Europe (adidas & Reebok) and all channels (eCommerce, Retail and Wholesale). He conceptualized, operationalized and delivered large-scale transformation projects with distributed (on-, near- and off-shore), teams overseeing creative engineering/prototyping, software development, business analysis and product and program management He best describes himself as Confident, Collaborative and Creative leader with a mantra of doing what’s best for the business. Honest, grounded, a believer in leading by example with the ability to work strategically with the Board but at the same time willing to roll up the sleeves to ‘’Get the Job Done’’