Ocado appoints Tesco’s former top exec as new chief commercial officer

Ocado has named Tesco’s grocery director Amit Chitnis as its new chief commercial officer.

Chitnis will join the online-only grocer later this year having spent around a decade at the Big 4 grocer in various roles including head of group strategy, director of trading and most recently grocery category director.

He will succeed interim CCO and buying director, Rose Price, who is retiring later this year after more than 12 years at the company.

Before Tesco, he spent over five years at Tata Group, starting as a TAS manager, before being promoted to regional sales manager and commercial manager for Tata Communications.

In a LinkedIn post, Ocado said: “We’re delighted to have announced the appointment of our new chief commercial officer, Amit Chitnis, who will be joining us later this year.

“Amit has a wealth of retail and grocery experience and we can’t wait for him to start. He will be heading up our commercial team and taking over from Rose Price who will be retiring at the end of the year.”

Meanwhile, it was reported earlier that Ocado Group is set to close its oldest warehouse, in Hatfield, putting about 2,300 jobs at risk.

The online grocer, which runs the Hertfordshire site in a joint venture with Marks & Spencer, said it hoped to redeploy as many staff as possible to other customer fulfilment centres, including its new Luton site, which is expected to open later this year.

Ocado also said it expected further improvement in productivity and increased capacity for same-day deliveries with the help of new technologies.