Rohit Jawa is all set to take over as MD and CEO of Hindustan Unilever (HUL) on June 27. Mr Jawa will succeed Sanjiv Mehta, who will retire as HUL’s MD and CEO on that day after leading the consumer goods company for a decade. 

Mr Jawa, a veteran HUL executive has spent over 35 years at one of the country’s largest fast-moving consumer goods companies (FMCG). Mr Jawa – who is currently Chief of Transformation of HUL’s parent company, Unilever, in London, will be joining as a whole-time director of HUL from April 1. He will also join the Unilever Leadership Executive and take over as president of Unilever South Asia from April 1. These roles will prepare him for the big post of HUL that he will assume from June 27 onwards.

As such, Mr Jawa will need little prior preparation for his upcoming big role, given his long and rich experience at HUL. Young Rohit joined HUL in 1988 as a management trainee after graduating in science from New Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and after completing his MBA in marketing from Delhi’s Faculty of Management Studies. The 56-year old top executive of HUL – who has also completed an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School – has held top positions in the company’s sales, marketing, transformation and general management departments across personal care, home care and food segments. Moreover, he has worked across the globe, beginning from Mumbai and then having served in Unilever’s offices in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, China, and the UK.

In one of his first overseas assignments in the Philippines decades ago, Mr Jawa had led a top team of executives to turn the Philippines into one of the top-10 markets for Unilever globally. As executive vice-president of Unilever’s North Asian region and as chairman of Unilever China, he had significantly transformed China into a competitive, profitable and consistent business centre for Unilever. Besides, in his recent role of Chief of Transformation of Unilever in London, which he had taken up in January 2022, Mr Jawa had successfully orchestrated the once-in-a-decade, end-to-end transformation of the global FMCG giant.

As Mr Jawa takes up his new responsibility as chief of HUL, he has quite a number of important tasks cut out for him. India is Unilever’s second-largest market after the US, and he has spent quite a long time in India. Moreover, he was also instrumental in turning the Chinese market – Unilever’s third-largest market in the world – profitable for the company a few years ago.

Mr Jawa’s past experience should prove to be quite an advantage for him to take on HUL’s challenges head on. Growth in the FMCG industry is slowing down over the past few quarters as rural shoppers slash expenditure on various home-care and personal-care products. The new HUL chief would also have to consolidate the gains of HUL’s acquisition of GSK Consumer Healthcare, which was overseen by his predecessor, Mr Mehta. Then there is also cut-throat competition in the sector from HUL’s big peers, such Procter & Gamble India, Dabur as well as newcomer Reliance Industries’ recent foray into FMCG. Mr Jawa may already have some plans up his sleeve to get HUL back its lost growth.