How Amit Chitnis helped Ocado Retail rediscover its mojo

For Amit Chitnis, one of his proudest moments came during a recent factory visit. One of its biggest suppliers told him Ocado Retail had “rediscovered its mojo”. The chief commercial officer – who joined the Ocado Group and M&S joint venture in December – is inclined to agree.

It marks something of a turning point for relations between suppliers and Ocado Retail. Not long ago, suppliers were complaining to The Grocer about a “conveyor belt” of buyers working in “disarray”. Former buyers themselves also recalled a “cut-throat” culture. But now: stability. And smiles, Chitnis says.

The mojo quote has “really stuck with me” he tells The Grocer at London restaurant Gymkhana, which has recently launched its own range of cooking sauces with Ocado (the brand, by the way, reports enjoying “genuine enthusiasm and support” from its buying team).

Employees are more content, too. “We don’t have empty seats, we don’t have people moving on quickly,” Chitnis says. As he puts it: “People are busy, but they’re having fun doing it.”

This hasn’t happened by accident. In Chitnis’ first month, he implemented a commercial team plan, summarised as “clarity, confidence and culture”. There have been skill sharing sessions among the buying team, who feel “more engaged and energised”. There’s a “buzz” about the place again.

Chitnis doubtless boosts energy levels just through his presence. He is a doer, who feels he has “found a seat on the rocket ship” of retail’s future. He grew up in Mumbai, “where – the stereotype – you either grow up to be a doctor or an engineer” meant he trained as an electrical engineer. But he quickly realised business appealed more than “rewiring circuits”. He took an MBA, eliciting a “mixed reaction” from his parents.

“I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, so I think they knew ‘he’s going to do what he wants to do anyway’,” Chitnis says. He landed a role at Tata Group selling leather to factories making handbags and shoes in south China. “I had a bag full of samples. Not too far from a door-to-door salesman, except I was cold calling and knocking on factory doors,” he says.

The experience has helped him empathise with the countless challenger brands that approach Ocado on a daily basis hoping for a spot on its (digital) shelves. “It’s the resilience you need to get comfortable with all of the times you have to hear a no, before you hear the one yes,” he says.

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Roles with Tata in India and Singapore followed for Chitnis, before he moved to Bain & Co. There he was “thrown at trying to solve some of the biggest, hairiest problems for the biggest companies in the world”.

“But I got a bit restless. I don’t want to be just delivering recommendations, it’s results I care about. I wanted to roll up my sleeves and do a bit of doing.”

Catching the retail bug

Retail felt right. “It’s tangible. You can touch it, you can feel it. You, your neighbour, your friend, everybody has an opinion, for better or for worse!”

Chitnis commenced a decade at Tesco in 2014, leading group strategy before taking on retail operations for 27 stores in west London. That was followed by stints as category director, head of trading for Booker Wholesale and latterly UK grocery director.

Ten years in, he applied the “strategy mindset” to his own career. He asked himself: “What would retail look like by the time I’m close to retiring? And I wasn’t convinced I was quite at the cutting edge of what the future looks like.”

At Ocado Retail, he believes he is. To start with, the eventual shift to online  grocery is “my view, my belief, my conviction”, Chitnis says. The signs are positive. Online grocery is outpacing physical stores in sales growth – 6.8% vs 3.8% – according to August NIQ data. And online share of fmcg spend is at 12.8% – up 12.5% on this time last year, and the highest level since 2022.

Ocado Retail is well placed to capitalise. It is growing even faster than the wider online grocery channel, putting it on a six-month run as the UK’s fastest-growing supermarket, according to the latest Kantar figures. It’s secured an 8.1% increase in active customers in the past six months, according to latest results.

Unique online model

As a pureplay online retailer, Chitnis is excited about Ocado’s way of working in particular. “The operating model for Ocado is so unique,” he says.

“If you want to range a new product, you don’t have to wait for a range review window. If you want to switch on a promotion or change your price, you don’t have to worry about somebody having to change labels in 500 stores,” Chitnis explains.

The company is taking advantage of this uniqueness. Take the recent hot weather, which led to a strawberry crop flush. Working with growers, Ocado began selling a 1kg punnet for the first time, at a supermarket-leading £4.30. “All this took 48 hours from the first phone call to being live on the site,” Chitnis says. “The agility of what we can do is not replicable elsewhere.”

Ocado Retail also knows its customers “very deeply and very forensically”. The supermarket knows the address, purchase history and preferences of every shopper. Also, exactly how baskets are built and “what you hovered on and chose not to buy”.

“It’s the equivalent of a physical store if there was eyeball tracking technology and thousands of cameras doing that for every customer,” Chitnis says.

But even that level of insight is “cute, but not enough” he points out. His ethos is “don’t stop at the insight, turn that into action with the suppliers”. That’s why Ocado is increasingly collaborating with brands to refine and target NPD, down to how products are marketed and priced. And shopper feedback is near instant.

It’s also helping brands birth new subcategories, with its trend-focused commercial team combing data on “what was searched for and not found” on its site.

For Chitnis, “identifying trends is the easy bit”. Then you get products on the site. But “the real magic is: how are you then helping [a brand] grow? Because our responsibility doesn’t end at finding something or listing it. Rather, how do we make it successful?”

As he sums up: “That tiny bit of difference in mindset is what really sets us apart.”