Vijayaratnam Tharumartnam

Head of Group Corporate Communications

QSR Brands Holdings

Vijayaratnam Tharumartnam heads Group Corporate Communications at QSR Brands Holdings Bhd, the company responsible for KFC & Pizza Hut in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Cambodia. Prior to that he was Chief Communications Officer at Berjaya Group.

With over 25 years of communications experience in-house and agency, Vijay has served in a variety of roles both in the public and private sectors. This includes Director of Communications at Proton, VP Marketing and Communications for the Multimedia Development Corporation, VP of Communications for HSBC Global Resourcing (UK) as well as Head of Corporate Affairs at BMW Group Malaysia. He began his career as a Producer at TV3 Malaysia, back when TV still meant something.

Vijay’s areas of focus are Crisis, C-suite Communications, People Development and Strategic Communications. A keen follower of Sociology and History, Vijay has a great interest in how technology is reshaping both communications and society, and cites Baudrillard and Meyrowitz as key influences in his communications thinking. He is an avid fan of cars, bikes, planes and trains, in abstract contrast to his neuro-motor skills. On weekends he can be found deep in contemplation as he ruminates on what Yoda ate on Dagobah as well as trying to calculate the exact distance of a parsec.