Joseph Cherian appointed Global CEO of GFA

Global Franchise Architects (GFA) recently announced the appointment of Joseph Cherian as its Global CEO. Prior to this, he was serving the company as the Managing Director of GFA Global, during which he had also taken up the additional responsibility as CEO, GFA India.

Speaking on this occasion, Fred Mouawad, Executive Chairman, GFA Global said that he has full confidence in Joseph’s ability as he has the vision, dedication and execution skills to be their CEO. Joseph has now relocated to India from Bangkok, with GFA’s stated intent of focusing and strengthening its Indian operations. GFA has established itself in Thailand with over 100 stores and also expanded its footprint in nine countries over the last few years. Commenting on the plans of the company, Cherian said, “Currently we have 200 stores globally across our portfolio of brands, and we plan to grow to over 500 stores by 2014. With the new plan, India would account for roughly 50 per cent of these stores”.

Currently, the company have 70 stores in India across four specialty food brands - Pizza Corner, Coffee World, The Donut Baker and The Cream & Fudge Factory. GFA has plans to make India the largest market for GFA Global by 2011. In order to strengthen the India operations, the company is planning to accelerate the expansion through both corporate and the master franchise route. The company is in the process of finding potential master franchise partners for western and northern parts of India and is also in talks with some Private Equity (PE) players to raise funds for the expansion in India.