HLL tunes in to parent's management structure

Nine-member managing committee takes guard.

Hindustan Lever (HLL) today took another step towards synergising its operational structure with that of Unilever by setting up a nine-member management committee under its new CEO Douglas Baillie.

All business directors will have profit and loss responsibility for their businesses to provide for a decentralised and simplified decision-making structure.

A single chain of command through the CEO will ensure the benefit of synergies across businesses, Harish Manwani, Hindustan Lever chairman and president Unilever Asia and Africa, told reporters here today while announcing the composition of the new committee.

The company, he said, was moving away from having two separate business units to "one Hindustan Lever", which would look at all the businesses and in keeping with this, Baillie had been appointed CEO, and will head the management committee.

Manwani said the new committee had been given a clear agenda. "We want to work the pyramid," Manwani said.

Which means the company will reinforce its position as a clear market leader by having products at all price points. The strategy for India is to grow not only the market shares but also the markets.

"Our aim is grow competitively, focus on the 'go-to market' and brand building aspects of the business and strengthen the depth of our functional excellence," said Manwani explaining that growth meant growing faster than competition and gaining market share in core categories.

The dynamics of the business had changed from being a supply-led business to one where demand needed to be created resulting in the need for being more active at the point of sale, he said.

The company would leverage the alignment with Unilever both regionally and globally to adopt the best practices when dealing with modern trade formats.

"Already," Manwani said, "our share in modern trade in some categories is higher that our share in general trade."

In addition to this, the company has also identified some of the general trade or kirana outlets as 'supervalue outlets' and was trying to bring some of the principles of modern trade like increased connectivity to these outlets as well.

On the innovation front, Manwani said that the strategy now would be doing fewer but bigger innovations and at the same time deploying them better. "The thrust will now be on juicing the innovations better as there is a lot that can be done with them."

The company was also looking at increasing its focus on exports. M K Sharma, vice-chairman, said the company would be focusing on exports to developed markets such as France and Japan instead of emerging markets, in categories where it could provide a value-add like oral care and tea bags.

In the new management committee, M K Sharma would continue as the vice-chairman as would D Sundaram as director, IT and Finance, and S Ravindranath as managing director, foods.

The new members on the managing committee are Sanjay Dube, executive director- sales & customer development, Dhaval Buch, executive director- supply chain, Anoop Mathur, executive director -speciality exports and Nitin Paranjape, executive director- home and personal care.

In addition to this, Sanjiv Kakkar has been appointed executive director-foods, who will succeed Ravindranath after his retirement next year. The managing committee will replace the existing national management with effect from March 1.

The only member from the existing national management who is not part of the newly announced management committee is Arun Adhikari, managing director, home and personal care, who has been appointed chairman, Unilever, Japan.

Dalip Sehgal will continue as executive director-new ventures and marketing services and will not be a part of the committee but will report directly to Baillie.