Pulling All The Right Levers

That 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 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.

- BENN KOCHUVEEDAN

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

Born in a middle-class Malayalee family in Maharashtra's sugar town of Kolhapur, Priya does not boast of a degree from the 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.

The immediate reference points that the market is lapping up are how Priya has turned around the struggling beauty and skin care business of the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant in London as its president since 2023 and has made it a 13-billion-pound-profit company.

Back home as the executive director of the home care division (2014-20), she helped boost the segmental profit margins from a low 13.1% to 18.8%, which also lifted HUL's overall margins from 15% to 22.3%.