Passion can move mountains

More women are entering the drinking space, in the past decade, observes Sophia Sinha,
Senior Manager Marketing, Chandon India, Moet Hennessy India Pvt Ltd. She is in the liquor industry for 15 years but for her, learning is a continuous process and she is busy crafting new experiences.

Sophie Sinha has become adept at launching brands and redefining them. She comes from an armed forces background and has an extremely multicultural and multi-religious background. She has lived in many cities across the country and has had exposure to diverse traditions. Having studied in the United States, she has been lucky to be interact with different ideologies, cultures and people. She says all this has helped her when it comes down to working on target consumer and behavior mapping. Sophia reveals that she has spent almost 15 years in this challenging industry. “I got the opportunity to launch Kingfisher Ultra and that is what got me into the business,” she expresses. Her family was supportive of her choice of joining the industry.

Turning Point

She ascribes Chandon as her major turning point career in wines & spirits, as “we at Moet Hennessy were not just launching a new brand or product but going to redefine how a particular segment of consumers perceived sparkling wine and introduce it to the Indian culture like it has never been done before.” When she started her career at Infosys, the one big thing she learnt is that hardwork and passion can make you move mountains. “I was fortunate to have worked directly with some of the founders of Infosys including Mr. Murthy and Mr. Nandan Nilekani and this is the one big life lessons that I could glean from them,” she says.

Working for Moet Hennessy has been one of the best experiences of her work life, says Sophia. “Working on Chandon has been a dream job. Since 2017, I have also been involved in creating desirability for Hennessy among younger consumers in India.” As Senior Marketing Manager at Moet Hennessy India, she works on an extremely interesting portfolio where she is changing the drinking repertoire of the Indian consumers with two of the major brands – Hennessy and Chandon.” When she joined Moet Hennessy in 2012, she had already worked on launching a few brands and building markets (in India and outside) in 3 different sectors – IT (Infosys), Financial Services (Western Union) and Beer (United Breweries). At Moet Hennessy, she realised that learning never stops, it’s an exciting journey. “Moet Hennessy has taught me so much more than just marketing. It has widened my horizons by giving me the opportunity to work on iconic and prestigious brands. We are not in the race for anything but crafting experiences.” She feels that empowering is a continuous process. “If you deliver consistently then you are entrusted with more responsibility and get parallelly empowered to take decisions. Ofcourse, as a boss, you have to trust your team to do what is needed and that is the moment you empower others in return,” sophia opines. Over the past decade, she has personally seen more women enter the field. “I think if you look at the market itself, there are more women entering the drinking space. In fact, the concept of ‘drinking’ has also intrinsically changed, she points out.