All you need to know about Nisa Godrej, the new chairperson of GCPL

Nisaba's ascension comes within 3 months of brother Pirojsha becoming chairman of Godrej Properties

In a significant development, Nisaba Godrej, executive director of Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) and younger daughter of Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej, has been appointed executive chairperson of the company, effectively passing the baton to her.
 
The move, effective May 10, will see her father take up a non-executive role as chairman emeritus of the company, with GCPL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Vivek Gambhir reporting to Nisaba, better known as Nisa, who is 38 years old.
 
Adi Godrej will remain chairman of Godrej Industries, the holding company of the group.
 
“It has been a privilege to serve as chairman during a period when we have delivered strong results and transformed the company,” Adi Godrej said in a statement on Tuesday. “I am grateful to our board for their thoughtful and planned approach to executing our succession plan,” he added.
 
The development incidentally comes within three months of the appointment of Nisa’s brother Pirojsha as executive chairman of Godrej Properties, the real estate arm of the Rs 14,000-crore Godrej Industries and Associate Companies, or GILAC, which is the Adi Godrej Group. This, say experts, indicates the succession planning the senior Godrej is putting in place at the 120-year-old business house, best-known for a cross-spectrum of products from soaps to mosquito repellents and hair colourants.
 
Godrej’s elder daughter, Tanya Dubash, meanwhile, will continue to be a non-executive director on the board of GCPL, while Godrej’s younger brother Nadir, though on the board of GCPL, will continue to oversee Godrej Agrovet, GILAC’s third company, which is the unlisted agri-products major. A fourth unit is the retail business under Godrej Nature’s Basket.
 
Nisa’s elevation will put her directly in charge of GCPL, a firm she has been attached to for about a decade now in various capacities. While her current role was overseeing strategy, human capital, and innovation functions for GILAC, she paid special attention to the talent and innovation requirements of GCPL, the flagship Rs 9,242-crore company of the group. This firm is driving the group’s ten by ten agenda, which is to grow revenue ten times in ten years, first unveiled in 2011.
 
GCPL’s rise in the last decade, say experts, has coincided with Nisa’s entry and involvement in the business, leading many to believe that she was the natural successor to her father at the firm. An MBA from Harvard Business School and passionate about girl education, Nisa is known for her sharp insights, and has been instrumental in helping GCPL achieve its three-by-three agenda, which is growth in three continents — Asia, Africa, and Latin America — across three categories, which are hair care, soaps, and household insecticides.
 
This entailed setting up GCPL’s M&A cell in 2008, which went on to make a string of acquisitions in Indonesia, and African and Latin American countries, catapulting it into the big league of consumer goods companies in the country.
 
Nisa, who is married and has a son, has also helped transform GCPL into a younger organisation, in which the average age of its employees is 35-36 now against 40 years earlier. The average age of senior leaders at GCPL had fallen to around 45 from 48-49 a few years ago, she had said in a conversation with Business Standard earlier.
Her focus on innovation has seen GCPL come out with a Rs 1 mosquito repellent for Good Knight Fast Card and a Hit Anti-Roach Gel, among others, in recent years. GCPL also stepped into the salon segment, investing in salon chain b:blunt and launching an exclusive range of products under the b:blunt brand name, all of which was overseen by Nisa.

All you wanted to know about Nisa Godrej

Name: Nisaba Godrej

Age: 38 years

Educational qualifications: BSc from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Harvard Business School

Profile: Younger daughter of billionaire industrialist Adi Godrej; married with a son

Siblings: Tanya Dubash and Pirojsha Godrej

Known for: Her sharp business acumen. She is considered a go-getter, who has been focused on transforming GCPL into a younger and enterprising company. She has been associated with GCPL for a decade and under her the company has made the leap into the top consumer goods companies in India with a consolidated turnover of Rs 9242 crore in FY17

Roles: She has worked in various capacities at GCPL, including managing M&A, strategy, human capital and innovation. She has been looked upon as a natural successor to Adi Godrej at GCPL