Mumbai: It’s 2014. Mobile phones are slowly becoming common in rural India. India’s biggest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company latches on to this wave. It launches Kan Khajura Tesan (loosely translated from Hindi to ‘earworm station’), a service where a missed call gave you free radio featuring music, news, jokes and Bollywood updates, along with some ads for brands like Lux and Lifebuoy.
The campaign, launched by Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), was India’s first free and on-demand entertainment mobile radio station. It took rural India by storm, reaching 33 million people, according to news reports at the time. It went on to win awards, including one from the World Advertising Research Centre. Priya Nair, then vice president of HUL’s detergents business, had piloted the programme for its flagship detergent brand Wheel.
Nearly a decade later, she’s back at the Mumbai headquarters with a new designation and mandate—HUL’s managing director and chief executive officer (CEO), tasked with turning around the company’s stagnating fortunes.
Nair replaced Rohit Jawa in August last year. Jawa had barely settled into the role—although appointed for a five-year term, he exited just two years into the job amid a slump in HUL’s business volumes. Sluggish rural demand, input cost pressure and intense competition in urban markets from premium brands pressured its performance. Months after Jawa took over the reins, HUL’s underlying volume growth fell from a high of 5% in 2022–23 to a meagre 2% the next year. The company cited a slowdown in consumption and uneven weather patterns as its undoing. A year later, volume growth continued to remain weak at 2% while margins stagnated or were squeezed.
In the post-pandemic years, HUL’s turnaround strategy focused on core mass-market brands such as Wheel, Lifebuoy, Clinic Plus, and Glow & Lovely. However, India’s wider personal care market was booming with innovative new brands—the direct-to-consumer (D2C) wave created new winners. There was a disconnect, and investors sensed it.
In the last three years, the company’s shares tanked 20%, even as the benchmark Nifty 50 gained 24% during the same period.
Nair needs some of the magic from 2014 to revive investor confidence. What changes are underway at HUL? Mint spoke with former executives and market watchers to understand how the new CEO plans to reshape the company.
HUL or Nair did not respond to Mint’s requests for interviews. A questionnaire emailed to the company also went unanswered.
The making of Nair
Nair studied at Sydenham College, Mumbai, and earned her MBA in marketing from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune. Straight out of college, she joined HUL as a consumer insights manager in 1995.
Nair spent decades within the broader Unilever ecosystem. She served as president of Unilever’s beauty and well-being division in London, overseeing a €13 billion business spanning hair care, skincare, prestige beauty and health brands across more than 20 markets.
Meanwhile, a leadership churn ensued at HUL.
For decades, the company has been the training ground for India’s consumer industry. But the bench started looking undermanned at times in recent years. “There is a reason why a lot of people left HUL. The decision-making power shifted outside of India,” said a senior executive who left the company in recent years and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Kartik Chandrasekhar, who was all set to become the executive director, personal care, decided to quit HUL in 2024. He joined as chief growth officer at cereals maker Kellanova. Sandeep Kohli, who headed Unilever Indonesia, went on to lead Aditya Birla’s jewellery retail brand Indriya in 2024. Madhusudhan Rao, executive director of beauty wellness and personal care at HUL, retired in 2023, and Prabha Narasimhan, who headed the home care business at the company, moved to rival Colgate-Palmolive in 2022.
Then, there was a steady flow of top executives to the parent organization as well, leaving a vacuum. Unilever needed a leader who could implement its global playbook in India, one that is being driven in a new direction.
For instance, Unilever has chosen to spin off its ice cream business. Then, it arrived at a $44.8 billion landmark deal in March to combine its global food business with US spice and sauce maker McCormick, but kept Indian food brands, such as Kissan and Bru Coffee, with the company.
“We are creating a €39-billion household and personal care pure play with leading positions in highly attractive categories and a stronger exposure to fast-growing geographies like the US and India,” Fernando Fernandez, CEO of Unilever Plc, said during an analyst call in April this year. He identified India as one of two “anchor markets” for the group’s global strategy and reiterated plans to “double down” on the country.
“We got late into the Chinese party; we will not get late into the Indian party,” Fernandez reiterated again in June, at the Deutsche Bank Global Consumer Conference 2026.
Now, he has found Nair to host that party, someone who steps up when needed.
In his autobiography, A CEO’s Brew: Stirred with Passion, Purpose and Humbition, former HUL CEO Sanjiv Mehta writes about a conversation from 2014. He was waiting for a car when Nair wanted to tag along. “I understand you will split up HPC (home and personal care) into home care and beauty and personal care. Can I be considered for the role to head home care?” Nair pitched herself.
Home care brands include Surf Excel, Rin and Active Wheel, among others.
Sudhir Sitapati, currently managing director and CEO of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, and a former colleague of Nair at HUL, recalls a story in his book, The CEO Factory. Rin, the detergent bar, was losing market share to cheaper products. HUL had patented a way to structure these soap bars without minerals (minerals give the soap a structure but also make it look dull). But it is tough to explain these technical terms to customers. So, Nair’s team launched the Rin Nil Mineral Bar with some other propositions.
“The bar was duster-shaped instead of cuboid, which made it more ergonomic, a flow wrap packaging against the norm of paper packaging in the industry made it more modern; and a brighter blue colour enhanced its clean perception,” Sitapati wrote.
Nair, in short, has led teams that have both innovated and knew how to sell.
The executive mentioned earlier noted that Nair had already worked under Fernandez for a couple of years. “Fernando trusted Priya. When Priya took over the job, she would have said that she can’t be tied to global red tape, and in the last eight-nine months, she’s been able to put a structure in place,” the executive added.
The leadership churn has given Nair an opening to rebuild the bench.
Reinforcements arrive
Earlier, HUL’s leadership team had a dual reporting structure that required reporting both locally and globally. Nair decided to do away with it. She brought in four new chief marketing officers (CMOs), all of whom now report to India business heads. The business unit heads, in turn, report to her.
“This will strengthen empowerment, accelerate decision-making and ensure more India-for-India choices,” she told analysts during an analyst call in February.
Meanwhile, the parent company gave her reinforcements from outside. The chief financial officer (CFO), Niranjan Gupta, joined HUL in 1994, went across industries and last served as the CEO of Hero MotoCorp Ltd. Ranjeet Kohli was appointed as the executive director of the foods business in April 2025. He was previously the chief executive at Britannia.
Quick quotient
A central theme in Nair’s strategy is the speed of doing business, and agility.
Unilever’s R&D (research and development) organization has carved out a dedicated India-focused category team designed to prioritize speed, agility and local customization. “We will continue to drive innovation where relevant, continue to premiumize our brands, focus on the segments that matter, and navigate volatility with the right measures,” Nair told journalists in April.
Nair is now doubling down on her quick commerce bets. “To capture this opportunity and lead the channel shift, we have established a dedicated quick commerce organization,” she said in February. “In this structure, the quick commerce lead directly reports into the HUL sales head, enabling faster decisions, sharper execution and higher focus on this high-growth channel,” she added. Quick commerce is about 3% of HUL’s total revenue today.
HUL, meanwhile, is changing its ad spend avenues. Artificial intelligence generated ads are picking up. Coffee brand Bru ran a campaign with Google Gemini on coffee dates. Digital media spends now total 40% of total media spends; it was merely 25% in 2023-24. The focus has shifted to being more agile versus running one big-bang national campaign.
Premium tales
Premiumization is a key lever Nair wants to use to grow HUL. In the March quarter of 2026, the company’s growth was driven by premiumization and improving urban demand, with higher-margin segments contributing disproportionately to the topline.
Nair has often cited the example of how HUL is leading the shift of Indian consumers from powder to liquid detergents. “As market leaders, driving premiumization remains a fundamental priority,” CFO Gupta said in April during an analyst meet.
HUL has committed ₹2,000 crore of capex in premium formats of its beauty and home care business.
In beauty, at the lower end are brands such as Lakmé, Ponds and Vaseline. The premium segment includes brands such as Minimalist, Dove and TRESemmé.
However, premiumization is not a strategy unique to HUL. All large corporates today are trying to take the premium route, from Tata Consumer Products to Marico. Experts argue that it is a time-consuming effort.
An executive from a competing brand who requested anonymity cited an example. He argues that the fastest-moving product is usually a company’s signature brand. A ₹10 Lux soap moves fast in any store across India. The turnover speed of a Lux body wash, a more premium product, is not as fast in all markets. Premium products give better margins to the company, but distributors still prefer to stock faster moving goods as it gives them better cash flow, the executive said.
Distributors Mint spoke to agreed. A Delhi-based HUL distributor, who didn’t want to be identified, said that staple variants of Vaseline move faster than premium products like Minimalist.
HUL first invested in skincare brand Minimalist through Unilever Ventures in 2021—today, it has a 90.5% stake in Uprising Science, the parent company of Minimalist. The FMCG giant also invested in plant-based supplement company OZiva in 2022 and acquired the company entirely last fiscal year.
Nair will now get the opportunity to tailor these brands to her vision, but she also needs to make acquisitions work. The company, globally, has a patchy record here.
HUL acquired Horlicks, Boost and Maltova in 2020, paying ₹3,045 crore to GSK Plc, even as the premium end of the market shifted to protein powders and sugar-free foods. Unilever bought D2C grooming brand Dollar Shave Club in 2017, only to sell it to PE firm Nexus Capital Management in 2023. The founders of the iconic American ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s have been complaining about the management ‘stifling’ their voices, and allegedly hurting the brand.
Catching the mosquito
While HUL has made investments in startups like Minimalist and OZiva, market watchers say Nair’s challenge will be to continue identifying niches where it can play.
“None of the large FMCG companies chose the acquisition model over organic brand building,” said Sandeep Nair of consultancy David & Who. “It’s just that the market chose it for them. Their hands were tied.”
“It’s like asking an elephant to catch a mosquito,” said S. Raghunath, former professor of strategy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, about large FMCG giants trying to target small consumer cohorts.
Beyond thinking, execution was also a challenge because players like HUL are used to manufacturing in huge batches. “There was a time in HUL when we could not manufacture anything below one tonne,” the former HUL executive mentioned earlier said.
Meanwhile, smaller and more nimble startups will continue to bite. Earlier, HUL had all the advantages of size and scale. Now, its a more level playing field because of digital distribution.
Adarsh Menon, a partner at venture capital firm Fireside Ventures, notes that a brand can easily achieve ₹500 crore revenue through online/quick commerce presence alone. Minimalist had an annual recurring revenue run rate of about ₹850 crore in 2025-26 while OZiva reported a revenue of ₹462 crore during the year. For context, HUL only has around 20 brands with annual revenue exceeding ₹1,000 crore, most of them are legacy names such as Sunsilk, Vaseline and Lux.
Caution in the air
HUL’s volume growth surged to a 15-quarter high of 6% year-on-year in the March quarter. It reported a 21.3% rise in net profit to ₹2,994 crore, and 7.6% growth in revenue to ₹16,351 crore during the quarter compared to a year ago. The performance beat Bloomberg consensus estimates of ₹2,612 crore in profit and ₹16,270 crore in revenue.
Investors, however, are still waiting for evidence of sustained growth—they remain cautious. As of May, 29 of 41 analysts tracking the HUL stock had buy ratings, compared with 36 buy calls out of 43 in May 2023, according to Bloomberg.
Some analysts believe 2026-27 could be a better year for the FMCG giant.
“Lifestyle nutrition appears to have unlocked the double-digit growth trajectory (which was struggling earlier),” analysts at the brokerage arm of UBS wrote in a note on 4 May. “Beauty & wellbeing too is a candidate for revival of growth in double-digits this year, led by significant product and pricing innovation across brands. We also think HUL tends to get better pricing and competitive advantage in an inflationary scenario,” the note added.
Priya Nair clearly has a lot on her plate, including on-going macroeconomic headwinds. But for now, she has taken the bull by the horns.
