Mr. Abhishek Shahabadi leads marketing for the Luxury and Premium Core Portfolio of Diageo India. In his current role he is leading the premiumization agenda with Diageo’s envious scotch and reserve brands such as Johnnie Walker, Singleton, Talisker, Black Dog, Black&White Smirnoff, Tanqueray etc. Affluent India is growing at a rapid pace with many International brands dialling up their ambition. Abhishek is leading the agenda to reinvigorate the Diageo portfolio, to drive category development along with creative and execution excellence. He is part of Diageo’s India leadership team that is steering the organization towards its vision of being the most trusted, best performing and most respected consumer goods company.

Abhishek is an authentic leader with a strong imagination that enables ideation, empathy with situations and people to unlock barriers to performance. He has been able to successfully deliver performance ignited by his personal purpose of ‘unlocking and actioning imagination’. Ownership, bias for action, performance focus and creativity are key values Abhishek imbibes personally and embeds in team culture.

He has had a long journey at Diageo since 2006 when he began handling the Media investments driving efficiency and effectiveness of marketing spends. Abhishek switched over to marketing in 2007 as Marketing Manager for the mainstream brands portfolio. In 2013, he was instated as Marketing Manager, responsible for the McDowell's No 1 portfolio leading it to become one of the largest CPG brands by retail value. He successfully assumed charge of a larger portfolio in 2015 to lead marketing for McDowell’s No1, mainstream brands and helped anchor brand governance for McDowell’s as it forayed into emerging markets.

Prior to Diageo India, Abhishek has worked with leading media & communications organizations such as Starcom, GroupM and Madison in the managerial roles. He brings with him over 19 years of successfully driving business growth and building compelling plans for brands. He completed his Postgraduation in Marketing Communications in 2000 from Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA).