Taking on HUL's hardest reset

THE FMCG GIANT'S FIRST WOMAN ENTRANT INTO THE CORNER OFFICE IS A RISK-TAKER BUT HAS HER FEET FIRMLY ANCHORED TO THE GROUND

- VIVEAT SUSAN PINTO

ADRESSING A GROUP of IIM students a few years ago, Priya Nair offered a deceptively simple lesson: find your purpose, and you will never lose steam. "It will drive you every day and you will love what you do," she said. In 2025, as the first woman CEO and managing director in Hindustan Unilever’s more than nine-decade history, that idea has become both her credo and her challenge.

At 53, Nair has inherited an FMCG giant at an inflection point. After two difficult years marked by sluggish volume growth, rising competition and changing consumer behaviour, HUL needs a reset. Niche digital-first brands are chipping away at its premium franchises, while agile regional and small players are squeezing it at the mass end. The task before Nair is not incremental improvement — it is to restore growth while making a legacy behemoth behave with the agility of a startup.

She has been clear about her intent. In her first media interaction in October, Nair laid out the contours of her strategy: double down on high-growth demand spaces, bring the focus back on volumes, and invest in emerging niche categories — or “market makers” — as Indian consumers continue to premiumise. The second half of FY26, with demand expected to stabilise, will give her the first real window to test whether this twin-track approach can deliver.