Excerpted from A CEO’s Brew: Stirred with Passion, Purpose & Humbition by Sanjiv Mehta, former CEO and Chairman of Hindustan Unilever Ltd. This extract is from the chapter ‘The Winning Decade’.

The HUL growth story is intertwined with the India story, and it has always been our simple but profound philosophy that ‘what is good for India is good for Hindustan Unilever’. Despite several challenges in the external environment over the ten years to 2023, we kept our faith and held strong to our purpose-driven strategy. Our commitment to the country was good for our business and it catapulted us to the fifth place in the coveted list of the most valuable companies in the country.

The annual reports that we bring out every year will show you that in the decade to 2023, we more than doubled our turnover in India and added ₹31 thousand crore ($3.8 billion) to the turnover. Ninety per cent of this was organic growth. No Unilever company came even close to this figure in terms of adding incremental turnover. If we were to look at the delta growth in dollar terms from the lens of PPP (purchasing power parity) then the addition to the turnover would cross the $10 billion mark. We also became the second largest Unilever country in the world but by far the most valuable.

For 27 out of 28 quarters till the onset of Covid, HUL delivered margin improvement. The only exception being the December quarter of 2016, just after demonetisation. We took the EBITDA margins from 15 per cent in 2012-13 to 25.1 per cent in 2019-20. Then the post-Covid inflation hit us. Despite this setback, we delivered 840 bps improvement in margins over a ten-year period and a business which was margin dilutive to global Unilever at the beginning of my tenure became handsomely accretive at the end of my tenure.

The market capitalisation increased from ₹1,00,793 crore ($12.2 billion) in 2012-13 to ₹6,01,202 crore ($73.2 billion) in 2022-23. On the day I demitted office at the conclusion of the AGM on June 26, 2023, the market capitalisation of HUL was ₹6,23,135 crore ($75.95 billion). This made HUL not only the fifth most valuable company in the country but more valuable than many of the big global FMCG companies like Colgate, Danone, Kellogg, Reckitt Benckiser and General Mills, among many others. During this period, HUL added significantly more to the market capitalisation in current dollar terms than the parent Unilever. A rare story in the global corporate world.

BSPaN (Bangaldesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan & Nepal), was not left behind. It grew in tandem with India, and Unilever in South Asia became a $9 billion turnover powerhouse with margins significantly accretive to global Unilever. This happened even though, from an economic perspective, it was a challenging period for many countries in the region.

Positive Beauty Vision

Our beauty and personal care division launched the Positive Beauty Vision to drive positive change for people and the planet through its portfolio of brands. We took a decisive step to embrace diversity and promote inclusion across our beauty and personal care portfolio. For instance, we removed the word ‘normal’ from advertising and packaging. Our iconic brand Fair and Lovely that had already set sail on the diversity journey through the HD Glow campaign in 2019 was renamed Glow and Lovely in 2020. Dove furthered this vision through its #StopTheBeauty Test campaign and Clinic Plus, on Women’s Day, launched its new campaign pledging to educate women to stand up against domestic violence.

We announced the Clean Future vision for our home care division, which was an ambitious blueprint for reinventing cleaning. The intent was to provide laundry cleaning products that are high-performing, affordable and are kinder to people and the environment. For example, the plan entailed replacing fossil fuels used in making some of the chemicals used in laundry cleaning products with renewable and recycled carbon, with the single aim of making the cleaning products a whole lot cleaner!

Sustainable global food system

The Future Foods initiative was taken up to support a fairer, healthier and more sustainable global food system. For example, in India, we face the challenge of insufficient calories for the deficient in protein and micronutrients. As one of India’s largest poor, unsafe eating out and a diet excessive in carbohydrates but foods and refreshment businesses, our aim was to lead the country’s processed food revolution by making food healthier, safer and with less wastage. We also cleaned up our portfolio. We divested our stake in KimberlyClark Lever as it was no longer strategic for us. We sold the modern foods business to a private equity firm. We also sold the Annapurna brand of staples and Captain Cook and exited the network sales business.

Over the decade we notched up several marketing victories. Our laundry business was the market leader but was struggling in 2013. It was losing market share to both local and multinational players and its profitability was weak. We were losing shares to Ghari at the mass end and to P&G at the premium end. Despite being the market leader, we had relegated ourselves to playing a defensive game. The turnaround began when we decided to control our destiny and lead the agenda rather than follow our competitors.

Excerpted with permission from Penguin Random House

Title: A CEO’s Brew

Author: Sanjiv Mehta

Publisher: Penguin Business

Price: ₹999

Published on March 8, 2026