How Hul Got Its Mojo Back

Chairman and MD Sanjiv Mehta seeks to reinvent HUL as a future-ready corporation that can juggle heterogeneous markets successfully.

- Ajita Shashidhar

Anjiv Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director of the ₹35,218 crore Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), has been a Unilever globe trotter and trouble shooter for the past 25 years. He started his stint with the FMCG multinational as part of the team setting up the business from scratch in Dubai, had stints as chairman of Unilever Bangladesh (which was in the throes of an anti-MNC sentiment), in Africa and again as chairman of Unilever operations in the Middle East (right in the middle of Arab Spring), with postings at the London headquarters in between.

In 2013, Unilever offered Mehta the chance to take over as CEO and managing director of HUL (in July 2018, he took over as chairman after Harish Manwani retired). It was not just a reward posting to his home country towards the end of a long and illustrious career. Unilever was probably looking at Mehta applying some of the unconventional and contrarian thinking he is known for in the Unilever network. (During Arab Spring, he told his Egypt country head to dramatically increase spending on marketing and distribution even as rivals were slowing down. Unilever gained massively as things settled down. In fact, it continued growing at double digits even during the peak of the trouble).