Apr 2025 – Jul 2025 · 3 mos

Oct 2024 – Mar 2025 · 5 mos · Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland · On-site

Jul 2020 – Oct 2024 · 4 yrs 3 mos

May 2016 – Jul 2020 · 4 yrs 2 mos

Oct 2014 – Apr 2016 · 1 yr 6 mos

• I head the Unilever business in the Gulf Region – A large multi country operation across diverse legal entities. I am responsible for the P & L of Unilever FZE and for our joint venture companies. Unilever is one of the major FMCG companies in the region with leading market positions in several categories and marketing brands many of which are household names in the region. I also lead the Customer Development agenda for the North Africa & Middle East region spanning 20 countries. My key responsibility as VP (CD) for North Africa & Middle East is to build capabilities across countries, create solutions to address emerging channels like e-commerce and set up new route to markets in white space geographies.

Jan 2012 – Oct 2014 · 2 yrs 9 mos

• Head of Customer Development function for Unilever in India (HUL) across channels & categories. HUL is the largest FMCG Company in India with an annual sales turnover of $5 billion and with over 100,000 sales associates directly covering 3 million stores. I was also responsible for leading the Customer Development agenda for the South Asia cluster and over a period of two years transformed the region into an execution powerhouse.
• Key Achievements
• Created the first traditional trade focused Customer & Shopper Innovation center globally. The output of this was an Integrated Channel Strategy – A global best practice in Unilever.
• Leveraged technology to create a new global benchmark in end to end deployment of technology from Order to Cash in a traditional trade environment
• Pioneered global Unilever initiatives in India – IQ (Intelligent selling process), Low Cost DMS for rural India, Cross selling of telecom products, digital coverage expansion
• Nurtured the Shakti channel to create a $200 million business with a network of 75,000 Shakti Ammas (A program by HUL to enhance the living standards for rural women) across India trained to sell Unilever products across 200,000 villages.
• Created a new organization to focus on the emerging ecommerce business and also to drive the digitization of the traditional grocery store in India.
• Recognition (Internal & External) – CEO Award: Unilever, Case studies in leading universities like Harvard, Ted Talk on Shakti, Recognition from industry forums.
• The CD team in India was consistently rated in the top 10 % of teams globally in terms of overall employee engagement across sectors by A C Neilson.

Jan 2009 – Dec 2011 · 2 yrs 11 mos

• I was responsible for the Unilever business in the Modern trade channel ($1 billion) & government institutions (CSD – A 4000 store chain focused on servicing the Indian army). I was also heading the Customer Development Centre of Excellence (HUL CD strategy cell) & driving the global IT strategy for Unilever for CD with focus on traditional trade. This was a period where the Modern Trade team was recognized as the best team on performance in HUL across channels & categories for creating a sustainable competitive advantage for Unilever. The HUL CD team was also recognized as the best CD team in Unilever globally for a series of innovations driven by the CD COE team in 2011.

Jan 2007 – Nov 2008 · 1 yr 10 mos

• Responsible for handling operations for North India for HUL - A $ 1 billion business with 600 + distributors and a team of 900 employees. I also created a Centre of Excellence for Customer Development for India ( CD – COE ) - A team of young managers given the task of transforming the sales system by leveraging new technology and processes.

Jan 2006 – Dec 2006 · 11 mos

•  I was heading a small cross functional team to understand best practices across the Unilever globe and embed them into a toolkit with focus on emerging markets. This team was actively handling and leading the end to end negotiations and relationship management in this period with customers like Reliance ( India ) , Makro ( Pakistan ) , Walmart ( India ) . The team established world class processes for handling Modern trade across S Asia in close collaboration with the Global Account Teams.

Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 · 2 yrs

• I was given the task of setting up a new cross functional team for Unilever in India to address the emerging Modern Trade channel. Over two years I established a stand alone cross functional team in India, built capability across critical areas like supply chain / finance / negotiations / account management / customer marketing - Most of these practices were new for Unilever in India. This business grew by close to 250 times in two years and the efforts behind this was recognized by our key customers through the numerous best vendor awards Unilever bagged in that period.

Oct 2002 – Dec 2003 · 1 yr 2 mos

• Regional Head of sales for Personal Care across South India

Jan 2000 – Oct 2002 · 2 yrs 9 mos

• Handled the Skin care & deodorant portfolio - Responsible for topline & bottomline as well as category strategic plan for the future.

Jun 1998 – Jan 2000 · 1 yr 7 mos

• Sales Manager for Personal Care range in Karnataka - A state in South India

May 1996 – May 1998 · 2 yrs

• Handling the Ponds Brand