Unlocking Growth

Fourth-generation scion Nyrika Holkar is overseeing a modernisation push at storied giant Godrej & Boyce to broaden its appeal to India's aspiring young consumers By ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN When Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the moon's south pole in August 2023, India became the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon.

- ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN

When Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the moon's south pole in August 2023, India became the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon.

Behind that successful mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) was a raft of companies that had supplied critical components to the space agency. Among them was Godrej Aerospace, a unit of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing, a part of the Mumbai-based Godrej Enterprises Group. Over four decades, Godrej Aerospace has supplied components and systems for hundreds of commercial satellite launches and India's mission to Mars in 2014.

"We have been part of most space missions in India since our inception, which is a huge privilege," says Nyrika Holkar, executive director of Godrej & Boyce and the fourth-generation scion of the more-than century-old conglomerate. Speaking to Forbes Asia in September at the group's headquarters, set amid lush mangroves in the northeastern Mumbai suburb of Vikhroli, Holkar is seen as the likely successor to her uncle, group chairman and managing director Jamshyd Godrej. The 76-year-old patriarch and Holkar's mother, Smita Godrej Crishna, 74, have a combined net worth of $11.2 billion, and they appear at No 20 on the list of India's 100 richest.

The Godrej name is widely recognised in India, not for its cutting-edge spacecraft parts but rather for a range of everyday consumer products, including locks, furniture and home appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines. For decades, Godrej's double-door steel closets have been fixtures in middle-class households, used to store everything from clothes and crockery to jewellery and documents. These consumer goods accounted for about 60 percent of Godrej & Boyce's fiscal 2025 revenue of $2.3 billion and it's where Holkar is putting most of her energy these days.