Emerging consumer
Paul Polman, the boss of the huge consumer products company Unilever, makes regular visits to India. In fact, since he became chief executive in 2008, he’s been there at least five times.
Polman isn’t going because he likes the country any more than he likes anywhere else in the world. But rather, the 51-year-old Dutch businessman travels there frequently because India is at the forefront of the worldwide fight to remain top of the fiercely competitive consumer products sector, which of course Unilever has a big say in.
And it’s not Procter & Gamble, Unilever’s biggest overall rival, Polman is most worried about in India. No, it’s a local company – in fact a third-generation, family-led and owned powerhouse called the Godrej Group that concerns him most.
Godrej might be a minnow in terms of sales when compared with the mighty Unilever – in its 2010 fiscal year, the Mumbai-based company had revenues of €2.5 billion, compared with €44.2 billion at Unilever – but it’s growing faster than the Anglo-Dutch company, which operates in the country through its subsidiary Hindustan Unilever.