Miles To Go Before I Sleep, Says Sanjeev Mehta After 31 Years At Unilever

In his final sign off from the company that he helmed for over a decade, Sanjiv Mehta, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), Hindustan Unilever (HUL), said that more than the numbers, he values the capabilities that the company has built to reinvent itself.

He termed, ‘Winning in Many Indias (WiMi) strategy as a breakthrough step that gave us a significant competitive edge, which he said, “was hard to replicate.”

“We have taken the science and art of market development (or market making) to a new level altogether. Today, these new segments constitute over 20 per cent of our turnover,” he said in his LinkedIn post.

WiMi strategy of HUL recognises the heterogeneity of India and has given the company a significant competitive edge.

The company has announced the appointment of Rohit Jawa, who will take over as MD & CEO from June 27. He welcomed Jawa and said, “I would like to welcome my successor, Rohit Jawa. I am sure under him new records will be set and the business will go further and higher.” Mehta began his post saying, “I started the day today with gratitude in my heart and prayers on my lips. Today, we announced my inning at Unilever will come to an end at the conclusion of HUL’s AGM on June 26.”

He also said, “I will go with a comfort that our business today is much stronger than ever before and our impact on the country & society much larger.”

Mehta added that his 31-year career has seen an exhilarating rise. And for 21 years, he had the privilege of serving Unilever’s businesses in 25 countries in various parts of the world as CEO.

Describing his role while in South Asia — which includes HUL CEO/executive chairman/president for the last 10 years — he said it was an honour of a lifetime. “It has been one of the longest tenures in the illustrious history of Hindustan Unilever,” he said, and added that he was the first incumbent CEO of HUL to be on the executive board of Unilever.

He described Unilever as an institution where values and purpose are centre stage and is a beacon of diversity and inclusion. “It is a company where creating a positive impact on the environment and society is as integral as building a brand. It is a company with perhaps the largest footprint in the world whose brands are available in more countries than the members of the United Nations,” Mehta said.

Mehta thanked the teams he worked with across geographies and acknowledged the challenges he faced along the way.

During his stint as the chairman and MD of Unilever Bangladesh, he said, “We turned around a business which was reeling and in deep trouble into one of the finest companies in the country while delivering mid-teens growth.”

While at the helm in The Philippines, he touched upon taking over the leadership of the biggest category in the region. As chairman of Unilever, North Africa and Middle East, he navigated the financial crisis and Arab Spring and delivered market beating double-digit growth over the five years he was there.

In the 10 years that Mehta was at the helm at HUL, the market capitalisation increased by 5 times to over $70 billion. This he said is more than the market cap of many global FMCG companies like Kraft Heinz, Reckitt Benckiser, General Mills and Colgate, among others.

“Just the market cap increase in the last 10 years would have made HUL the 10th-most valuable company in the country,” he said.

During his tenure in India, he talked about the ‘Re-imagine HUL’ agenda and said it is a great example of a legacy company re-inventing itself with data and technology.

HUL's Shikhar app has been adopted by 1.1 million retailers and its Dapada factory has been recognised as a lighthouse factory by World Economic Forum (WEF) for Industry 4.0.

It is the first among FMCG firms and is the first factory across industries in the country to be recognised as lighthouse for sustainability. He also said that its Jarvis model allows the company to optimise different variables using Bayesian modelling. From a linear value chain, HUL is becoming a web of ecosystems.

He also touched upon women in the management going up to 45 per cent from under 20 per cent and said the company is on course to becoming a gender-balanced management by 2025. HUL is now focusing its energies on the front line and with the blue collars.

He signed off saying, “I am excitedly looking forward to my next inning. I am reminded of Robert Frost’s famous lines …. “Miles to go before I sleep.” In the next few months, I will have an opportunity to meet many of my team members in different locations, to thank them and give them a big hug. God Bless!”