When Priya Nair walked into Hindustan Unilever’s Mumbai headquarters on August 1 last year as its chief executive officer and managing director, she was returning to where her career began. She had joined HUL as a management trainee in 1995 and spent the next three decades working across brands ranging from Wheel and Surf to Dove, before moving to Unilever’s global leadership team.
The homecoming was also historic: Nair became the first woman to lead HUL in its 92-year existence, taking charge of a company then valued at nearly Rs 5.9 lakh crore. Dalal Street welcomed the appointment, with the stock rising 4.6% the next day. Citi cited her “strong track record”, while looking for a strategy refresh after a period of relatively weak performance.
That last phrase captured the less glamorous part of her inheritance. The company handed to Nair was India’s largest consumer goods firm, but one stuck in low gear — volume growth had slipped to around 2%, urban demand was under stress, and the Street had begun asking whether the FMCG bellwether had lost its edge.
A year on, Nair believes the turnaround is gaining traction. But she is stopping well short of calling the job done.
“I remain happy with the progress but not satisfied,” Nair said while reflecting on her first year during HUL’s June-quarter earnings call this week. “You can never be satisfied in a company like this with what the opportunity is. But happy with the progress we see quarter on quarter.”
It is a very HUL answer — the restlessness of an institution that has long prided itself on being a “CEO factory” for corporate India, now voiced by an insider who rose through its ranks. This time, the numbers gave her something to be happy about. HUL delivered its strongest underlying sales growth in 13 quarters at 10%, equally driven by price and volume, while consolidated revenue rose 10.1% year-on-year to Rs 17,341 crore. Volume growth, which had hovered around 2% when she took charge, has improved to 5-6% over the past two quarters, suggesting demand is recovering after a prolonged slowdown.
Nair attributed the improvement to structural changes rather than a one-off rebound. “I believe behind this, there are some strong fundamentals,” she said, highlighting four priorities: reshaping the portfolio towards faster-growing categories; concentrating investment behind “bigger, bolder and fewer bets”; improving go-to-market execution through wider distribution and sharper channel segmentation; and accelerating brand building and innovation.
The playbook bears the imprint of her career. Having run home care between 2014 and 2020 and beauty & personal care thereafter — before watching global consumer trends up close from Unilever’s London headquarters — Nair has pushed HUL harder towards premiumisation and categories in which Indian consumers are trading up.
Ads, Tech, and Premiumisation
The strategy has been backed by higher spending. HUL raised advertising and promotion expenditure to `1,657 crore in the June quarter, the highest in 11 quarters, even as commodity costs remained volatile. It also invested in technology, including Unilever’s Fragrance House in India, an AI-enabled Liquids Lab in Mumbai that can reduce formulation-development timelines sixfold, and supply-chain initiatives that have helped HUL secure eight World Economic Forum Lighthouse designations across six manufacturing sites.
Street Perspective
Analysts, however, caution against reading too much into one year of improving numbers.
Sachin Bobade, head of research at Monarch Networth Capital, said the improvement in volume growth should be viewed against an unusually weak base. “A favourable base has certainly helped in the last couple of quarters. The real test will be whether HUL can consistently deliver 6-8% volume growth over the next few years on the base it is building now,” he said.
Global brokerages remain divided. Goldman Sachs and Citi lowered their target prices after HUL missed Street estimates on first-quarter net profit, while Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and Macquarie retained positive ratings, citing a healthy demand outlook. Jefferies said Nair’s commentary remained constructive on demand and margins, while Morgan Stanley expects resilient demand to support volume growth alongside calibrated price increases.
Another Mumbai-based FMCG analyst, who declined to be named, said Nair’s focus on execution and premiumisation was directionally sound but would take time to yield meaningful results. “The broader FMCG sector has had to contend with post-pandemic demand normalisation, inflation and urban stress, making one-year assessments difficult,” the analyst said.
HUL’s latest quarter was not without blemishes. Consolidated net profit fell 3% year-on-year to `2,673 crore, even as Ebitda margins held steady at around 23%, reflecting pressure from input costs and sustained brand investments. The company has indicated that price hikes of 2-5% may continue into the September quarter.
For Nair, the larger message is that HUL is rebuilding for sustained growth rather than chasing a single quarter’s performance. She pointed to its improving trajectory — from 3% growth in the first half of FY26 to 10% in the June quarter — and continued gains in turnover-weighted market share as evidence that the strategy is working.
“We remain extremely confident in how we will be able to navigate,” she said, despite uncertainties around commodity inflation, geopolitics and the possible impact of El Niño on the monsoon.
The trainee of 1995 has seen HUL through demand droughts before — the rural distress of the early 2000s, demonetisation and the pandemic. Each time, the company’s answer was the one Nair is betting on now: distribution muscle, brand investment and patience.
Whether her first year marks the beginning of a sustained revival or merely reflects a favourable comparison base will become clearer over the next few quarters. For now, she has delivered stronger momentum — and, in true HUL fashion, raised expectations for what comes next.