Sunil Alagh, the public face of Britannia Industries, led the company to great heights with his goal of making every Indian a Britannia customer.

Alagh was sacked in Mumbai on Wednesday after the Britannia board passed a resolution to 'terminate his employment with immediate effect.'

The 55-year-old charismatic executive joined the country's largest biscuit company in 1974 as group product manager from Jagatjit Industries, and was its managing director and CEO for the past 10 years.

Alagh became the managing director at the time the Nusli Wadia-Groupe Danone combine ousted the late Rajan Pillai to take control of Britannia Industries. Alagh had been suspended from the company by Pillai while the battle for Britannia was on.

During Alagh's tenure as managing director, the company's sales increased to Rs 1,451 crore (Rs 14.51 billion) in 2001-02 from Rs 447 crore (Rs 4.47 billion) in 1992-93. Net profit jumped from Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) to Rs 203 crore (Rs 2.03 billion) during the period.

The dairy business was hived off into a 49:49 joint venture with New Zealand's Fonterra in 2002. However, this deal was criticised by analysts because Britannia' s joint venture partner Danone was itself a dairy powerhouse.

The dairy business had come under scrutiny earlier also. In 2000, Britannia had hired Paris-based Shombit Sen's Shining Strategic Design to craft a new look for the dairy business.

In a major branding exercise, the entire range of Britannia's dairy products, including milk in tetrapack, cheese and butter, was rechristened Milkman from Zip Sip.

Alagh is also credited with the success of biscuit brand Tiger, a glucose biscuit, which contributes nearly half of Britannia's biscuit sales.

However, he hasn't able to repeat the same success with other brands. Some observers have also expressed concern over the company's acquisition of the Kwality biscuit brand.

With the dairy business hived off, Britannia is returning to its basics by focusing on biscuits, something the company hopes will treble turnover to around Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) by 2005.

Its other diversifications, including cakes and breads, are yet to achieve critical mass.