A. Shekhar
Shekhar was appointed CEO of ofi in January 2020 upon its creation following the reorganization of the Olam Group. Shekhar joined Olam in 1992 and has been an Executive Director and a member of the Group Board since 1998. Shekhar held a variety of roles in the Olam Group, he was previously Group Chief Operating Officer, Executive Director – Finance and Business Development, and prior to this he incubated and managed various global businesses including the Nuts, Spices and Packaged Foods businesses, where he led many of the Company’s organic and inorganic growth initiatives.
Rishi Kalra
Rishi was appointed CFO of ofi in January 2020 upon its creation following the reorganization of the Olam Group. Rishi began his career with Olam in 2000 and during this period has served as CFO India, CFO West Africa, and President and Global Head of Corporate Finance. He is a founding member of the first Circle of Practice in Asia of The Prince of Wales Charitable Project, Accounting for Sustainability (A4S). A4S inspires action by finance leaders to drive a fundamental shift towards resilient business models and a sustainable economy.
Ashok Krishen
Ashok is a management graduate with almost 30 years’ experience. He has been with Olam since 1992 and is the Global Head of the nuts business which includes almonds, cashew, hazelnuts, peanuts, pistachios and walnuts. He is also Chairman of the Executive Human Resource and Compensation Committee.
Prakash Jhanwer
Prakash joined Olam in 1998, taking responsibility for coffee operations in Uganda. He moved into the risk function in 2001 and relocated to Vietnam in 2007 to take on the role of Country Head, extending to a regional role in 2010.
Since 2016, he has been responsible for Olam’s Southeast Asia and China operations, which he continues to manage today. His key markets include China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and Thailand.
Prakash is a Graduate of Commerce and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management. He was recently awarded the prestigious Young Alumni Achiever Award by his alma mater for Corporate Leadership.
Vivek Verma
Vivek joined Olam in 1992 to head operations in India. He is currently responsible for the Coffee and Commodity Financial Services businesses. Originally trained as an engineer, Vivek has over 30 years’ agri‑commodities experience.
Sandeep Jain
Having joined Olam in 1998, Sandeep has expertise across all five ofi product platforms. He became CEO of ofi’s Dairy business in 2017, also taking on the role of Global Head of Sales in 2020. As CCO, Sandeep has responsibility for driving sales excellence and customer centricity with more focussed key account management processes. In leading the ofi F&B Solutions platform, Sandeep oversees global strategy execution for the platform enabling it to become a growth driver for the business. He also continues to oversee the Dairy business globally.
Sandeep is a Graduate of Commerce and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.
Tejinder Singh Saraon
Teji joined Olam in 1997 and went on to manage ofi’s cocoa business in Togo, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Singapore. He moved to London in 2009 to manage the company’s global cocoa beans and products business, returning to Singapore in 2019.
He was integral in the integration process following the acquisition of ADM Cocoa in 2015. He is an expert in cocoa trading and origination, and previously served on the Board of Cocoa Association of Asia.
Ian Haslegrave
Ian joined ofi in January 2022, taking responsibility for the global legal, compliance and company secretarial teams.
Ian has over 30 years of experience working in both private practice and global FTSE listed companies across a diverse range of sectors including food, media and distribution. He has significant commercial, M&A and management experience with previous roles including executive management responsibility for HR, information security, indirect procurement and risk at a global level.
Kamesh Ellajosyula
Kamesh joined Olam in 2010 and held various senior manufacturing, innovation and quality roles. In 2020 he became Chief Innovation & Quality Officer at ofi, overseeing a global network of Innovation centers and driving quality and food safety across 100+ food ingredient manufacturing plants.
Kamesh holds a Master’s degree in Food Science from the Pennsylvania State University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the State University of New York.
Dan Turney
Dan joined ofi in January of 2022, bringing with him 35 years of FMCG food industry experience. His industry experience includes many iconically branded food companies, several private label manufacturing entities as well as multiple private equity portfolio companies. Specializing in end to end operations and supply chain disciplines, Dan’s focus is delivering the ‘one-ofi’ business for all stakeholders across a balanced scorecard of performance. As the global, functional lead for operations, Dan is responsible for aligning and realizing successful, holistic results for ofi across more that 115+ facilities around the globe.
Sathyamurthy Mayilswamy
Sathyamurthy (Satya) joined Olam in 1996 to manage Sesame and Cashew operations in Nigeria, before moving on to lead Cocoa and Cashew operations. He moved to Cameroon as Country Head in 2001 before taking the role of Country Head – Nigeria & Benin in 2004. He then established the business across South America in 2007. In 2020 he began his current role at ofi as Regional Head for Latam and head of Cocoa Americas
Satya has over 30 years of international industry experience. He is an agricultural Engineering Graduate from CAE, TNAU (India) and holds an MBA from IRMA.
Yusuke Kurosaki
Yusuke joined Olam in 2016 and has worked across a wide range of initiatives, including corporate strategy, re-organization & re-structuring, operational excellence and customer excellence.
He has been in the food & beverage industry for over 15 years and has held various positions within the sector from supply chain & procurement, international sales & marketing, to business development and M&A.
Yusuke holds an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business.
Usha Kakaria-Cayaux
Usha joined ofi in September 2022, taking responsibility for driving the company’s one-ofi strategy and amplifying its unique entrepreneurial culture leading global diversity, inclusion and equity, organization effectiveness and global talent management.
With over 25 years of professional experience across a diverse set of industries and iconic brands, she has expertise across finance, sales, marketing, project management and strategy. Usha has worked across all areas of HR – leading HR strategy, talent management, organization transformation, leadership development and succession.
Steve Byers
Steve joined ofi in September 2022, taking responsibility for expanding ofi’s leadership position on sustainability by digitizing traceability, supply chain delivery, and social impact transparency.
Steve has over 30 years of experience, which includes working at blue chip global listed companies across a diverse range of sectors including distribution, consumer goods and food ingredients. He holds significant experience in Information Technology (IT) management and leading large-scale digital transformational initiatives.
Roel van Poppel
Roel joined Olam in 2013 as the global commercial lead for its spices business. He then moved internally to lead the award-winning sustainability insights management system AtSource. Most recently, Roel was seconded as a co-founder of the wider industry led sustainability measurement digital platform TRACT. In 2024 he became Chief Sustainability Officer at ofi, with responsibility for scaling ofi’s ability to drive positive impact across its five leading product platforms.
With over 25 years of industry experience, spanning senior leadership roles across the food and agriculture sector, he has extensive expertise across both food ingredients and sustainability, along with having held several board positions – including as Vice Chair of The Sustainable Spices Initiative.
Roel holds an MSc from Wageningen University in environmental sciences.
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How do you differentiate between the environmental impacts of organizations across different geographies, local conditions, products, local regulations etc.?
For several years, ofi has been working towards assessing the true value (cost or benefits) of some of our operations on the ground. Our latest case study on Natural Capital Valuation: Assessing Natural Capital costs in coffee operations, delves into year-on-year monetary impact of our select coffee growing operations in five origins.
Globally, an estimated 12.5 million to 25 million smallholder farmers depend on the coffee industry for their livelihoods, according to figures from Fairtrade1 and the FAO2. However, the majority of these farmers face significant challenges including limited access to formal agronomy training, inadequate resources, small farm sizes and insecure land tenure. These factors often hinder the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, which are crucial for preserving Natural Capital over the medium and long term. As a result, coffee production often imposes a cost on nature in the form of GHG emissions, degradation of soil structure and fertility, depletion of ground and surface water, and loss of natural ecosystem services critical to agricultural production.
To address these challenges, we employ Natural Capital valuation techniques, which leverage environmental economics to assign a monetary value (US$) to our impacts and dependencies, encompassing carbon emissions, water usage and ecosystem services. Quantifying Natural Capital in this way enables us to assess and mitigate risks while fostering investments that promote a positive impact on landscapes and ecosystem.
We evaluated twenty AtSource+ coffee farmer groups sourced from five different origins3 to assess their GHG emissions and water use related Natural Capital Costs (NCC). Reporting on the NCC is based on each metric tonne of product which makes the cost intensities very sensitive/ dependent on farm level yields. Thus, understanding the underlying yield dynamics is also crucial for interpreting these NCC footprints effectively.
The combined expertise of our local sustainability teams with partners such as Funcafé, TechnoServe, Côte d’Ivoire's National Nutrition program, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) delivers solutions to improve access to clean water, healthcare services and supplies, and nutritious food.
Initiatives range from using geo-location to identify and screen for infant malnutrition in farming communities in Côte d'Ivoire - where one in five children experience stunted growth and development - to fortifying key staples with vitamins and minerals in our processing facilities.
Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) have become increasingly valuable in helping us understand and tailor our interventions. They help us identify children at risk of, or in a situation of child labour, so that we can engage with families to improve and enable school attendance through training and facilitation of necessary certificates for example.
Drawing on best practices by the Fair Labor Association and the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), CLMRS has been scaled up to cover all nine of our direct cocoa sourcing countries, coffee in Guatemala, cashew in Nigeria and 100% of our hazelnut sustainability programmes in Turkey. To date, our CLMRS systems covers over 260,000 farmer households.
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