Renu Basu

Senior Vice President – Global Sales and Marketing, The Indian Hotels Company Limited

She is part of the Executive Team and leads Global Sales and Marketing at IHCL where her responsibilities include Sales, Marketing, Loyalty and Digital Marketing. A seasoned professional with over three decades of experience, she has been laser-focused on ensuring IHCL is the single most iconic and profitable company in the hotel industry. The brands IHCL is known for are the much revered Taj, SeleQtions, Vivanta and Ginger.  Through her career, she has pioneered several initiatives that range from the Introduction of Key Account Management and launching successful Global Sales Missions, to sub-initiatives on Weddings and the Women Traveller, stretching to Sales Force Automation and memorable advertising campaigns are all built towards achieving the strategy of the company.

Renu epitomizes customer centricity and has worked hard to build a customer-obsessed culture, that is now augmented by data, digital and technology. As a people person, Renu has invested a lot of time in nurturing and building relationships with customers, both internal and external. She believes strongly that one must constantly remain sharp, absorb insights on behavior and translate that into designing what customers want. 

For Renu, acquisition of a business, contributing towards the growth of market share and ensuring retention of customers never gets old. She lives by the three tenets of Performance, People, Processes. Her strong belief is that there is absolutely no substitute for hard work and if one has a winning mindset, positive attitude, and pursues excellence the desired results will follow. 

With strong relationships and execution skills, she was featured in Impact’s 50 Most Influential Women from the advertising, media and marketing industry in India.  Earlier this year 2020 she was conferred an International Travel Award by the Pacific Travel Writers Association as the  Best Professional Marketing.

She represents IHCL as an Executive Committee Member on PATA and has held positions including Board Member - British Business Group, Chairperson of Tourism - Confederation of Indian Industry Western Region, Chairperson of the Tourism Committee - Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry. 

Renu has been a role model for workplace diversity having led the otherwise male-dominated sales function across offices in the US, UK, Middle East, Australia and India.  Extremely passionate about diversity and according to her, IHCL  has been the preferred employer for young women who want to pursue a career in  Sales and Marketing in hotels. Her belief is that gender diversity brings significant value to this function with their ability to build relationships, spot opportunities and eye for detail. According to her, women understand the power of collaboration and have the ability to lead complex teams which are extremely critical in this business. Finally, she believes that women hold themselves to lofty standards of accountability, leading to high performance while being exemplary at embracing change – key in today’s dynamic world.