25+ years at the sharp end of retail, fashion and consumer businesses. Now channeled into sharp advisory, serious training, and the kind of creative thinking that actually moves organisations.
Zubair Fareed Patel
Founder & Principal Advisor, ZP Advisory
I built my career at the intersection of retail strategy, brand building, and people leadership. From Shoppers Stop and Future Lifestyle Fashions to Health & Glow and Absolute Brands, I have spent 25+ years inside some of India's most ambitious consumer businesses.
ZP Advisory is where that experience becomes yours. Whether you are a brand looking for sharper positioning, a leadership team that needs to think differently, or a retail business that wants to perform better at every level, I bring the full picture: strategy, creativity, data, and storytelling working together.
My personal brand is "Curious by Nature" for a reason. I do not think of myself as a traditional consultant. I am someone who has always been restless enough to ask the next question and experienced enough to know what to do with the answer.
"Creativity is not a department. It is how you approach every problem. Strategy, storytelling, data - they are all creative acts when done well."
Absolute Brands - Big Hello
Chief Business Officer
Health & Glow Pvt. Ltd.
Chief Merchandising Officer
Future Lifestyle Fashions
VP Category & Private Label
INSEAD · IIM Bangalore
Executive Programs in Strategy & Leadership
I work best with people and organisations that are serious about growth and willing to think differently about how they get there.
Retail and Consumer Brands
Established brands navigating category complexity, channel shifts, or the need to sharpen their commercial story.
Startups and D2C Businesses
Early-stage businesses that need senior thinking without a senior full-time hire - from go-to-market to brand architecture.
Corporate Leadership Teams
Teams that want to communicate better, think more creatively, or build a culture of data-backed decision making.
Multi-Generational and Family-Led Businesses
Second and third-generation business owners looking to professionalise operations, sharpen brand positioning, or build a growth strategy for the next chapter.
Across strategy, training, brand, data and storytelling - everything connects back to the same question: what is the most creative, intelligent path to real growth?
01
Retail, Consumer and Category Advisory
End-to-end strategy for brands, startups and family-led businesses navigating the modern retail landscape, from go-to-market to category architecture. Future-forward frameworks for buying, ranging and competitive positioning, built for how retail actually works today.
IncludesRetail and Consumer Advisory · New Age Category Management
Strategy02
Brand and Market Intelligence
Building brands that stand for something, from your positioning and value proposition to every touchpoint. Backed by structured insight into your market, your consumer and your competition, so decisions are grounded in reality, not assumption.
IncludesBrand Architecture and Positioning · Consumer and Market Intelligence
Brand and Research03
Business Storytelling
Learn storytelling techniques that make your point land. Use data visualisation to cut through the clutter and stand out.
Storytelling04
Capability Building and Coaching
High-impact leadership programs and coaching that shift mindset and embed lasting behavioural change, delivered pan-India. Lifting sales performance at team and individual level, and building creative, story-led, data-backed thinking across Buying, Merchandising, Operations, HR and Marketing.
IncludesExecutive and Corporate Training · Sales Capability and Commercial Coaching · Cross-Functional Capability Building
Training and CoachingSee signature programs →Each one is built around your own numbers and situations, with live cases, role plays and actions your people can use the following week.
01
Business Storytelling
Shape one message for every stakeholder, and tell the story behind the numbers so people act.
02
Leadership Development Programs
Multi-day programs that bring frontend and backend leaders together to own growth with conviction, clarity and confidence.
03
Think Like an Owner
For operators. Read the P&L with an owner's eye, and manage space, inventory, customers and people as assets you control.
04
Turning Workplace Conflict into Growth
Turn friction into useful dialogue, instead of avoiding it or letting it escalate.
05
Influence and Engage with Stakeholders
Build trust before you need it, and move work across functions you don't manage.
06
From Merchandising to Curation and Co‑Creation
Move from simply picking products to shaping ranges together with your customers and partners.
A few moments from training sessions, client engagements and leadership programs.
Technosport's team is growing fast, and its leaders needed to own that growth with conviction, clarity and confidence. Two days, five modules, with frontend and backend leaders working side by side.
Day 1
01Think Like an Owner
02Business Storytelling in Retail
Day 2
03How to Influence and Engage with Your Stakeholders
04Conflict as an Opportunity for Growth
05Chart Your Growth
Built on the floor. Refined in the room.
Bring a program like this to your team
More from the room
Category Management Training
Delivering a high-impact session on merchandising and shelf strategy
Apollo Pharmacy - Leadership Engagement
With the Apollo Pharmacy senior team after a strategy and storytelling engagement
Opinion Leadership in Action
Leading discussions on category storytelling, strategy and commercial thinking with senior retail teams
From keynote addresses to panel moderation, Zubair brings practitioner-level insight to India's leading retail, fashion and consumer industry platforms.
Speaker at the ET Retail ShopFWD Summit 2026
Panel discussion at the ET Retail ShopFWD Summit 2026
Speaker at IFF 2025
Speaker at Economic Times Great India Retail Summit & Awards 2026
Awarded at the FAME ET Retail Awards Ceremony 2025
25+ years across India's most recognised retail, fashion and consumer businesses.
Engagements as an independent advisor, trainer and consultant.
Retailers Association of India
Retail Industry BodyDelivered category management and business storytelling programs for RAI's member network - India's largest organised retail industry association.
Apollo Pharmacy
Health & Wellness RetailWorked with Apollo Pharmacy's senior leadership team on category strategy, commercial storytelling and capability building across one of India's largest pharmacy retail networks.
Technosport
Leadership DevelopmentDesigned and led a two-day Leadership Development Program for Technosport's frontend and backend leaders, covering ownership, storytelling, stakeholder influence and conflict. See the program
Insight without story is just data.
Story without strategy is just noise.
Creativity is what makes both of them work.
Whether you are a brand, a startup, or a corporate team looking to rethink how you operate, tell your story, or perform better - I'd love to hear what you are working on.
No. While my deepest experience is in retail and consumer, the services I offer - strategy, storytelling, brand thinking, data, training - apply across industries. I am already working with organisations outside traditional retail, which is exactly why ZP Advisory is positioned as sector-agnostic.
Both, depending on what you need. Some engagements are a focused project - a brand positioning exercise, a training program, a data strategy review. Others are ongoing, where I work closely with your leadership team across a longer period. We can structure whatever fits.
Yes. Training delivery is available pan-India, in person or virtually. I have delivered programs across multiple cities and have experience working with distributed teams across retail, banking, and FMCG organisations.
Honestly, the best way is a conversation. Book a 30-minute call and bring your challenge. If I can help, I will tell you exactly how. If someone else would serve you better, I will tell you that too. I value long relationships over quick transactions.
Experience at the coal face. I have actually owned P&L, led buying teams, built brands and sat in the rooms where commercial decisions are made. That context changes everything. You are not getting someone who studied retail. You are getting someone who lived it.