Why corporate supermen like Suresh Narayanan, Al Rajwani, Manoj Kumar, Issam Bachaalani are back in India

MUMBAI: Suresh Narayanan, Al Rajwani, Manoj Kumar, Issam Bachaalani — they’ve all come back home. These Indian executives have all returned in the recent past to head the local units of global consumer firms and help further the parent’s emerging markets growth strategy.
Of these, Narayanan is a bit of an outlier because he’s been drafted to quickly help put Nestle India back on its feet in the aftermath of the Maggi ban. But it’s all part of a trend as he and his colleagues bring to India their lessons from driving growth in both developing and developed markets such as the Philippines, Egypt, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere combined with a natural ability to deal with a multicultural consumer profile. Several Indians in global roles across markets are keen to get back. After all, this is where the big growth story is being scripted.

Among those who have returned to head the India businesses of global companies are Rajwani, MD and CEO at Procter & Gamble; Kumar, MD of GSK Consumer Healthcare; and Bachaalani, MD of Colgate-Palmolive.

Unilever’s Sanjiv Mehta moved back in 2014 and Bharat Puri, formerly of Mondelez, is now managing director at Pidilite India, which makes Fevicol.

Hospira India picked Srini Srinivasan as its managing director from Novartis. Across the globe, emerging market growth continues to create hundreds of millions of new middle-class consumers. By 2025, China, India and Brazil are expected to be the second, fourth and ninth-largest consumer markets in the world in that order.

“There is a strategy behind getting them because copy pasting what was successful in the West will not work in India,” said Hemant Upadhyay, managing consultant and leader of executive rewards practice at Hay Group India.

“Therefore, they need heads who understand Indian sensibilities or have worked in similar markets.” Companies see India as a diverse market where a onesize-fits-all approach isn’t likely to work. “India is like a melting pot of many countries in one — some developed and some developing,” Rajwani of P&G India had said in response to a query from ET previously.

“I am eager to leverage my experiences leading different countries that comprised the Arabian peninsula as well as working in countries such as South Korea and China when they were at a similar stage of development that India is in today.”

Natural progression

Some consultants say this trend is a natural progression of India exporting talent in the 1990s and 2000s.

“As the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies expanded in the ’90s and in the past decade, they had a lot of good talent who had to be exported to retain them and at the same time, the smaller regional geographies did not have native talent of the same quality,” said Ashutosh Khanna, consumer partner at search firm Korn Ferry International. “Being affordable was a big plus and coupled with Indian talent’s hunger for newer challenges, this fuelled an export boom. However, getting them global exposure and bringing them back was always part of the plan.”

Executive search firms say Indians with their natural multicultural abilities are able to handle diverse markets better. Also, facing depressed sales in global markets, multinationals are worried about losing their grip on developing markets such as India.

“There is a beeline of expat Indians in various consumer companies globally who are looking for an opportunity to relocate to India,” said K Sudarshan, managing partner, India, and regional vice-president for Asia EMA Partners, a search firm.

“Indians have a natural cultural advantage to help companies deal with the diversity of the marketplace using their global and local understanding. Even Indian companies have changed their cultures as they have grown to be like multinationals.”

Gaining exposure

The new Nestle India boss said the parent company grooms its managers and develops their capabilities.

In Narayanan’s case, he succeeded in boosting business in Egypt at a time of political turmoil in the country. He had then been moved to the Philippines but that assignment was cut short owing to the need to get him to India fast.

“Nestle as an organisation keeps giving varying degrees of stretch seeing one’s capability and then growing them,” said Narayanan in an earlier interaction with ET. “We are part of an international talent pool… I think in the wisdom of things, depending on the development of the market and depending on what stage we are in, you get called upon to take assignments.”

Companies move their best executives around to help them gain as much exposure as they can. “The best are moved around every three-four years to ensure newer experiences that groom them well,” said Khanna of Korn Ferry.

“The talent that was too young to become general managers of a risk-high market like India were given opportunities in developing countries that had lesser risk and now are brought back to head the domestic business.”