Singapore – Food and beverage giant Fraser & Neave has tapped Rahul Colaco as its new CEO, heralding a leadership change for the 142-year-old brand. Colaco succeeded his predecessor Hui Choon Kit on October 1, 2025, with the task of leading a legacy company in a highly competitive global market that demands both strategic foresight and operational agility.

Colaco brings close to three decades of international experience, having lived and worked in eight cities across India and held executive positions in countries including China, Malaysia, Italy, the Netherlands, and Nigeria. Most recently, he served as the Chief of Spirits at ThaiBev, F&N’s parent company, overseeing its international portfolio from Bangkok, Thailand. Before that, he led Myanmar’s whisky maker Grand Royal Group through the Covid-19 pandemic, showing resilience and adaptability in a challenging business environment.

“Singapore is country number ten,” Colaco said with much humor, reflecting on the global nature of his career journey. He attributes the variety of experiences he gained to the way he was able to look at things afresh and glean a different perspective from mentors and teams of diverse cultural backgrounds. “When you move around, your perspective and mind dramatically opens up because you meet many different people and learn from different cultures,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Straits Times.

Backed by his leadership, Colaco aims to make diversity a strategic advantage. He believes leading multi-cultural teams is not about managing operations, but about fostering creativity and innovation. “Diversity brings new thinking and when leveraged well, can create real magic,” he said, while pointing to inclusive leadership to be one of the reasons behind the success of any organization.

Colaco’s leadership style fuses a task-oriented approach with a high level of commitment to people. He has his teams create “user manuals” on their work preferences, things that motivate and drive them, and things that frustrate them to help communicate better and avoid conflicts. This practice is an intrinsic part of his conviction that effective leadership is deeply rooted in personal engagement and situational flexibility, with a view to ensuring every employee performs the best.

An early career planning advocate, Colaco encourages students and young professionals to define their personal brand and build relationships with potential employers long before graduation. “Every individual is a brand, so it is important to know what you stand for,” he said, underscoring his commitment to mentorship and talent development.

Colaco’s move to Singapore comes at a time when F&N continues to renew its product offerings while remaining true to its storied heritage. The company, renowned for its household brand names such as 100Plus, Nutrisoy, and Sunkist, recently signed a partnership with Netflix’s survival reality show Physical: Asia, demonstrating its openness toward innovation and reaching out to modern demographics. F&N also has 20 manufacturing plants across Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, maintaining a global presence that demands world-class talent management and operational excellence.

Despite being new to the Singaporean market, Colaco is already focused on the talent acquisition of candidates, especially for those areas that require digital fluency, business acumen, and learning agility. According to him, alignment of purpose with goals among individuals and organizations is key towards attaining high-performance people.

Outside the boardroom, Colaco looks toward sports for inspiration, notably tennis, using Roger Federer’s disciplined yet strategic approach as a metaphor for decision-making in business. He also believes that winning in business, much as in sports, requires rigorous planning, engagement with people, and the willingness to take calculated risks-but never at the cost of enjoyment and passion in work. Colaco’s appointment signals F&N’s commitment to combining global experience with local insight, ensuring that the company stays competitive in an evolving marketplace.

As Singaporean and regional businesses continue to grapple with issues like digital transformation, changing consumer preferences, and rising competition, F&N’s choice of a globally seasoned leader reflects the need for adaptive and forward-thinking leadership to sustain growth and relevance. Under the astute leadership of Rahul Colaco, Fraser & Neave is positioned to innovate from the front while leveraging its rich heritage in the quest to become a vibrant, future-ready organization-balancing operational excellence with cultural sophistication. It is expected that his leadership will further cement F&N’s position as one of Asia’s and indeed one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies while leading the brand through the intricacies of a dynamic, interconnected business landscape.