Pulling All The Right Levers

Dalal Street has given a five-notch salute to the news of a small-town girl Priya Nair moving to the corner room of the country's largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) maker.

- BENN KOCHUVEEDAN

It is less about her being the first-ever woman to lead the 92-year-old Hindustan Unilever, but more about her accomplishments during her three decades in the company.

Priya's journey began in 1995 as a management trainee in the company, also known as the 'CEO Factory' for grooming dozens of trainees into chief executives of large multinational corporations.

Born into a middle-class Malayalee family in Maharashtra's sugar town of Kolhapur, Priya does not boast of a degree from top B-schools—she graduated from Sydenham College in Bombay and then earned a master's in marketing from Symbiosis Management Institute in Pune (not from top-tier IIMs). Nair's rise to the top itself breaks many a myth.