A people's man with leadership skills

Over a decade ago, Mr Harish Manwani, then Director (Personal Products) at Hindustan Lever, as it was then called, was making a presentation to journalists from The Hindu group, on the company's strategy in the personal care space. With an irrepressible smile, Mr Manwani said its strategy was TPM. Seeing our puzzled faces, he was quick to add, “No, it's not total productive maintenance, but two per month!” Which translated to the two launches a month that he wanted his team to do.

This aggression is what Mr Manwani, ever since he took over as Chairman, brought to Hindustan Unilever which has seen a series of new launches in the premium segments of many categories.

His tenure has also seen HUL very emphatically say it will do everything it can to protect market share even at the cost of sacrificing margins in the short term. A strategy that paid off in the longer term.

The last quarter results showed that HUL volumes grew 14 per cent while profits grew by 9 per cent, which was the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit volume growth.

Aggressive price cuts by feisty competitors have seen HUL too respond unblinkingly, with Mr Manwani, a Beatles fan and a squash player, forcing the company to be more nimble. It was a shift from the power brands strategy that his predecessor M.S. (Vindi) Banga had embarked on. The team of Mr Manwani and HUL Managing Director, Mr Nitin Paranjpe, has also pushed distribution of HUL brands, increasing reach to 1.5 million outlets from under a million a couple of years ago.

A man of action and execution is how a senior employee of the company described Mr Manwani. “Many will talk strategy, but he has delivered on execution,” he says. Essentially a people's man, the articulate Mr Manwani, staffers say, can put a name to a face and address them. A former senior employee also recalls that Mr Manwani was very good at grooming leaders and proof of that are the many companies in the corporate landscape which boast former Lever-ites as CEOs.

Mr D. Shivakumar, Managing Director, Nokia India, a former Lever-ite himself, who worked extensively with Mr Manwani, recalls him as someone with high energy who could build collaborative teams. “He always set ambitious goals,” he says. Now, his people skills will be called upon even more as he takes on a global role in Unilever.

India rising to the top

Mr Harish Manwani's rise to the top of a global firm such as Unilever follows in the footsteps of many global Indians. Recently, Mr Rakesh Kapoor was named CEO of Reckitt Benckiser, a blue-blood European company. There are many others earlier such as Ms Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo; Mr Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citibank; Mr Anshu Jain, Head of corporate and investment banking, Deutsche Bank; Mr Ajay Banga, President and CEO, MasterCard; and Mr Vasant Prabhu, Vice-Chairman of Starwood Hotels Group.

There were many ahead of Mr Manwani who made it to the executive committee of Unilever at its HQ in Blackfriars in London. The former Chairmen of HUL, Mr T. Thomas, Mr Ashok Ganguly, Mr K.B. Dadiseth and Mr M.S. Banga were all on the executive committee of Unilever globally but Mr Manwani is the first to be made Chief Operating Officer in a newly created post for the global consumer goods giant, a recognition that growth in the future is going to come from emerging markets such as India.

COMMENT NOW