Storm rider

As he prepares to hang up his boots, Narayanan, who brought Maggi back from the brink, takes Akshara Srivastava through his eventful career

- Akshara Srivastava

Some people are meant to deal with storms. Suresh Narayanan is one of those people. When I meet him on a monsoon morning, I try to look for the traces that years of crisis management might have left on his face. All I see is a smile.

I have chosen a quiet corner at the Oberoi's all-day diner, Threesixtyone Degrees, in Gurugram for the breakfast meeting with Nestle India's outgoing chairman and managing director. On July 31, Narayanan will vacate the corner office he had moved into 10 years ago — in the middle of a storm (of course).

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India had ordered a nationwide recall of Nestle's wildly popular Maggi noodles over concerns about high levels of lead and misleading labelling regarding monosodium glutamate content.

The company initially went into denial mode, inviting further criticism and the controversy impacting its share price. But then it quickly course-corrected. It voluntarily recalled the noodles from the market, submitted samples to independent laboratories, challenged the ban in court, and opened more communication channels with consumers.

Today, India is the biggest market for Maggi noodles worldwide. Earlier this month, the company set up a new line at its Sanand factory in Gujarat to jack up Maggi noodles' annual production by 20,300-odd tonnes.

On that note, we order coffee: Americano for him and a cappuccino for me.

Narayanan, 65, has been with Nestle for 26 years, starting out in India but later moving to Singapore as managing director — a three-year stint marked by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. In 2010, he moved to Egypt, where (no, the Nile didn't change course) the Arab Spring broke out. From there, he moved to the Philippines for four months, before returning to India.