Akshay Jatia is the Chief Strategy Officer at McDonald’s India (West and South) leading Business Strategy, Consumer Technology and Innovation for the company. Akshay joined McDonald’s India in 2015 and over the last 7 years has worked cross-functionally to understand the nuances of strategy, operations, marketing, IT and synergized them to grow the brand and has successfully led many business critical projects.

Akshay’s McDonald’s journey started as General Manager – Business Extension and he played a key role in growing and consolidating the company’s brand extensions - McDelivery, McCafé and McBreakfast. He led the launch of the digital delivery business for McDonald’s, in early 2015, when the Online Home Delivery Market in India was almost non-existent. Akshay set up a ‘digital delivery’ team at HRPL that comprised a group of cross-functional experts across customer insight, analytics, operations, logistics, digital marketing and technolog and launched the McDonald’s digital delivery platform – McDelivery app in 2016.

Akshay’s also spearheaded the project to offer customer a new McDonald’s experience and thus launched the ‘Experience of The Future’ (EOTF) restaurants. These new restaurants gave customers a dramatically different McDonald’s with the contemporary design and the cool, new look integrate technology across all customer touchpoints. These restaurants had self-ordering kiosks, tablets and air chargers and a table tracker to enable table service – a first for a QSR in India.

During the pandemic, while McDelivery ensured business continuity, Akshay also led the launch of an innovative new channel – On-The-Go, that enabled customers to order food on the McDelivery app and collect it from a pre-designated spot close to the restaurant. This new format became a key growth driver during the lockdown and grew 3 times in 3 quarters, bringing new customers to the brand fold.

Akshay holds a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in Finance and International Business from Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. In his free time, he enjoys listening to music, reading, and keeping himself fit while indulging in food. He has been recognised as the 21st century Inspirational Icon and bagged the Dedicated Stalwart Award for bringing in the tech revolution at Westlife and McDonald's.