Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) appoints former Hindustan Unilever Ltd executives, Rajesh Sethuraman and Vijay Kannan, to its global leadership team.

According to reports, Sethuraman will join as chief executive officer for the Asian region; Kannan will head business transformation and digital businesses.

Godrej Consumer Products is a leading emerging markets company.

Sudhir Sitapati, managing director and chief executive officer, GCPL says, “we have ambitious aspirations for GCPL, inspired by our purpose of bringing the goodness of health and beauty to consumers in emerging markets. Our strategy is to grow category development driven by relevance, access and marketing investments, and funded by a digitally enabled simplification of our company. We are on a journey to reduce inventory and wasted costs to create significant fuel for this growth and digital transformation.”

Sitapati, a former HUL executive himself, has joined as MD and CEO of GCPL in October 2021.

According to the company, “the appointments will be effective July and are part of a larger plan for a digitally-led business transformation.”

Sethuraman has spent over two decades at Hindustan Unilever as well as parent Unilever, leading teams across categories and divisions in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In his previous role as vice president of digital process transformation, he led the execution of Unilever’s largest digital transformation program across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Kannan, was HUL’s IT head, and prior to that, worked at Asian Paints. Kannan holds an MBA from IIM Lucknow and a Bachelor of Engineering from College of Engineering Guindy, Chennai.