Nisaba Godrej to lead GCPL's innovation team

The Global Innovation Council is aimed to help the company increase revenues from new products

Industrialist Adi Godrej’s younger daughter, 35-year-old Nisaba Godrej, will spearhead a new Global Innovation Council at the Rs 6,391-crore Godrej Consumer Products. The council is aimed to help the company increase revenues from new products.

Educated at Wharton and Harvard universities in the US, Nisaba, also the executive director at the company, will work with Vivek Gambhir, managing director (MD); Sunil Kataria, sales and marketing head; Sundar Mahadevan, research and development head; and heads of Indonesia, the UK, Latin America and Africa.

The eight-member council will meet every quarter to identify new ideas and lessons from various markets and build a pipeline of products. “It will accelerate the pace of cross-pollination and help us build a road map for the future,” Gambhir, also a Harvard alumnus, told Business Standard.

THE IDEATOR

• Nisaba Godrej, 35, studied at Wharton and Harvard universities in the US and is the executive director at Godrej Consumer Products
• She will lead the Global Innovation Council at the company, aimed to help the company increase revenues from new products
• The eight-member council will meet every quarter to identify new ideas and lessons from the company's various markets and build a pipeline of products

Gambhir, MD since July 2013, said over a third of the company’s incremental revenues today come from launches. “Innovation is helping us increase our revenue growth,” he said.

In the past six months alone, the company has launched the Rs 1 Fast Card paper-based mosquito repellent, using inputs from its Indonesian business. The company wants to especially push Fast Card in villages, where reach of household insecticides remains low. Competition in the segment has grown in cities and companies are looking for new consumers.

In 2012, Godrej Consumer used lessons from its Argentine business to roll out sachets of creme hair colour for Rs 30 each. That year it also rolled out the Aer air freshner, developed again on its experience in Indonesia. The company has also taken household insecticides to regions in Africa.

Gambhir said this exchange of ideas and lessons among its various regions would be substantially increased across its soaps, hair colour and household insecticides businesses. The company gets 45 per cent of its revenue from household insecticides, 35 per cent from soaps and the remaining from hair colour and allied products.

Godrej Consumer’s consolidated net profit rose 14 per cent year-on-year to Rs 196 crore for the three months ended December. Consolidated net sales grew 17 per cent to Rs 1,979 crore from Rs 1,694 crore in the year-ago period. Sales of household insecticides, soaps and hair colour grew eight per cent, six per cent and 37 per cent, respectively, during the quarter, Gambhir said.