Bharat Puri, Md, Pidilite, is the first non-family head of the Mumbai based company

It was an early December morning in 2013. Bharat Puri and his wife Alka, who were vacationing at Fort Lauderdale in Florida, were seated on a beach, discussing plans for the last ten years of his working life. He was also thinking of moving to India and there was an opportunity. Madhukar Parekh, chairman and managing director (MD) of Pidilite, the largest manufacturer of adhesives and industrial chemicals in India, had offered Puri the post of the first non-family head of the company. Parekh, son of the late founder Balvant Parekh, would take on the role of executive chairman.

The Parekhs wanted to take the company global and were scouting for professional talent. Enter Puri, who was president, global chocolate, gum and candy for MondelÄ“z International, based out of Zurich. (Earlier, as head of Cadbury India, which was later acquired by Kraft Foods in 2010 and split into two companies—Kraft and MondelÄ“z—he knew the local FMCG market and had successfully led the company through a crisis in 2003, when, in a few instances, worms were found in the milk bars.)

Not surprisingly, Puri, who had been an independent director on the board of Pidilite since 2008, took the call to join Pidilite. “I told myself: Here is an opportunity to take a good homegrown company to the next level. Can I make it a world class company where I can leave behind a legacy?” Puri, 55, tells Forbes India at his Andheri office on a rainy June day. And, in April 2015, he became the first professional managing director of the Mumbai-based Pidilite.