Tolga Cebe’s career path has taken a different direction from the one he envisaged as a young person. The Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for Bottling Investment Group and CEO for Coca-Cola Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei grew up in a household where both parents were university professors.
“As you can imagine, I grew up in an environment where academic success and analytics were at the center of everything,” Cebe reveals.
Following in their footsteps, Cebe attended university, where he completed a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in industrial and chemical engineering.
“But then I made the jump into the colorful world of marketing,” he says.
“Moving from Türkiye and the Middle East and very recently coming to South-East Asia was an amazing experience for me.”
What followed was a journey that took Cebe from brand management to consulting and from fast-moving consumer goods companies to retail and textiles. Always up for a challenge, Cebe then began his two-decade-long career with Coca-Cola in Türkiye.
“I managed to go through a functional diversification during this period,” he recalls. “I was starting over again, with marketing and commercial operations.”
Cebe’s move to Singapore 18 months ago offered another new beginning. The bustling city-state was a very different environment to the one he had been used to in the Middle East.
“Moving from Türkiye and the Middle East and very recently coming to South-East Asia was an amazing experience for me,” he says.
Not only was the culture different, but the potential for business opportunities was also exciting.
“For example, India is a huge opportunity. The ready-to-drink beverage market is still at the beginning of the regular market cycle. The consumption per capita is currently very low, and the growth potential is exponential,” Cebe enthuses.
“The diversity of the business dynamics across markets and being exposed to different working cultures really bring a very steep learning curve. It gives you such great satisfaction as a businessperson.”
Embracing the potential on the Asian continent relies on Cebe and his team leveraging a large beverage portfolio.
“We have a full beverage portfolio covering sparkling beverages, juice, tea, water, energy drinks and coffee. It is critical to understand our consumers’ needs so that we can provide the right beverage solution in the right pack, at the right price and at arm’s length,” he says.
“When facing our retail customers, it’s all about establishing long-term relationships with a win–win spirit, rather than transactional engagements.
“Through Coke Buddy, our award-winning digital initiative, we’ve introduced a modern, seamless solution that has streamlined ordering for over 22,000 traditional trade outlets across Malaysia. This innovation is transforming our operations and redefining the digital landscape of the beverage industry in the region, helping us meet our partners’ needs more effectively.”
It is critical to understand our consumers’ needs so that we can provide the right beverage solution in the right pack, at the right price and at arm’s length.”
Naturally, he says, a robust supply chain is integral to maintaining these relationships and ensuring products reach where they’re needed. “Our cutting-edge plant in Enstek, Malaysia, along with initiatives like Coke Buddy, enables us to keep building new capabilities that drive future innovation,” Cebe says.
“This allows us to better meet the demands of our partners and build operational resilience, helping us to adapt in real-time to market needs. And then our next strategic enabler is completing the digital transformation of the entire enterprise.”
Alongside digitalization, Cebe explains that sustainability is an important pillar of the company’s philosophy.
“We have a long-standing pledge called World Without Waste, where we aim to help collect and recycle a bottle or a can for every bottle or can we sell and use,” he says.
This can only be achieved through work with governments, NGOs and communities, which requires strong relationship-building and leadership on Cebe’s part. Despite being part of a global multinational group, he insists that entrepreneurship is still essential.
“It’d be naive to expect our company to operate close to how a startup company would operate, but I still believe that there are some elements there that we can take,” he notes.
“I think agility and pace in decision-making are much more important than it was 20–30 years ago.”
“There’s power in the diversity of thought that comes with including different talents from all around the world.”
He also encourages his team to take ownership when making big decisions.
“It’s about looking at the business as if you own it,” he says. “I tell them, ‘If this was your family business, how would you decide?’
“As I discovered, when you move into senior roles in the business, you have to make fewer decisions, but those decisions are critical.”
This highlights the importance of choosing the right people for the right job, Cebe acknowledges, which also comes down to diversity and inclusivity.
“There’s power in the diversity of thought that comes with including different talents from all around the world, all with different backgrounds and knowing they’re welcome in the organization,” he concludes.
“The more we actually establish that spirit in the organization, I think we get exponential returns.”