This appointment highlights the company’s continued investment in leveraging global talent and innovation to support its long-term growth strategy. Dr. Varma brings more than 30 years of experience across technology leadership, digital transformation, global capability centres, innovation, organizational effectiveness and large-scale business operations.
Throughout his career, he has built and scaled high-performing organizations, led enterprise transformation initiatives and established capability centres for several global companies.
Before joining Ralph Lauren, Dr. Varma served as Global TechOps Leader at Walmart Global Tech, where he led the Next Generation Tech Stack program. In this role, he was responsible for driving enterprise-wide digital transformation, cloud adoption, technology modernization and data quality initiatives across Walmart Stores, Sam’s Clubs and distribution centres worldwide.
Earlier, he spent nearly 4 years as Vice President Strategy and Chief of Staff at Walmart Global Tech India. During this period, he led technology strategy, business operations, enterprise agile transformation, innovation programs, technical learning initiatives and organizational effectiveness efforts. He also played a key role in strengthening Walmart’s technology operations in India and supporting strategic growth initiatives.
Dr. Varma also served as Country Manager at NerdWallet, where he was responsible for establishing the company’s India operations. Prior to that, he worked as Country Head and General Manager at ChinaSoft International, building the organization’s India presence and developing a technology and delivery centre serving global markets.
His entrepreneurial experience includes founding ThoughtLeadership.in and later Cognitive Chasm. Through these ventures, he advised organizations on strategy, innovation, leadership, agile transformation and organizational change. His doctoral research led to the development of the Theory of Cognitive Chasms, a framework focused on enterprise adoption challenges related to Generative AI and digital transformation.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Varma has also held senior leadership roles at Yahoo!, NetScout Systems, Network General, McAfee, Huawei, Philips, Siemens and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). His experience includes building development centres from the ground up, leading global engineering teams, driving enterprise modernization and developing large-scale technology platforms.
With deep expertise in technology strategy, innovation and organizational transformation, Dr. Varma is expected to play a key role in strengthening Ralph Lauren’s global capability and technology operations in India.
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