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 she 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. 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 the 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 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-poundprofit 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%. The market is also benchmarking her against the stellar show that Sanjiv Mehta (the CEO before the outgoing incumbent Rohit Jawa), who was instrumental in more than doubling annual sales to Rs 58,000 crore from Rs 25,000 crore, and market-cap soaring four times to over Rs 5.5 lakh crore during his five-year term ending in June 2023. Priya doing an encore is what the expectation is. Analysts and markets have already factored in her ability to do the not-so-easily-doable that too at a stellar scale.London-based Priya assumes a 5-year tenure from August 1 at a time when the company is facing slowing growth and intense competition from fast moving D2C brands and new-age players. Under the watch of the outgoing leadership, sales barely climbed 2% while the stock plunged 10%.Many analysts are also comparing her elevation to the top job as what Varun Berry has done to Britannia, who brought fresh thinking and a new strategy, driving the company into an extraordinary growth trajectory. Street is expecting a similar kind of acceleration in growth for HUL, post management change, said SBI Securities analysts.Priya is expected to bring a lot of best practices, product innovations, and new products in high-margin areas, as she did in the home care division first and then at the beauty and wellness division later. That Nair has a strong track record across key categories and deep understanding of the market is the key lever she enjoys along with the solid support she has in the top management.Global brokerage houses are also seeing the change in leadership as a catalyst for HUL. The Japanese brokerage firm, Nomura believes that this leadership change will give HUL the necessary edge over its competitors, helping it tackle market challenges, speed up its digital transformation, and tap into the growing and long-term opportunities in India’s consumer market.Priya joins the elite club of Desi C-suite executives to head global organizations, many of whom are women. The long list of HUL trainees becoming global leaders includes Leena Nair (CEO of the global luxe fashion brand Channel, and who also hails from Kolhapur and parented by Malayalees), Prabha Narasimhan (Colgate Palmolive India CEO), Harman Dhillon (Tata Consumer Products head) and Anuradha Razdan among others.That Priya will simultaneously be joining the Unilever leadership executive team and the HUL board indicates the trust the top team management has in her.“I am certain that with her deep understanding of the Indian market and excellent track record, Priya will take HUL to the next level of performance,” HUL chairman Nitin Paranjpe said in the statement appointing her.
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