Mehmood Khan's journey from top Unilever exec to fighting Lok Sabha polls

Fighting as the JJP-AAP alliance's candidate in Gurgaon, Khan calls it his 'Kurukshetra war' as he squares off against seasoned politicians

As a child, Mehmood Khan says he would often navigate through waist-deep waters to reach school some distance away from his village of Nai Nangla in Mewat. From there, he went  on to navigate the globe as a Unilever executive -- from seeking business opportunities in Eastern Europe as it came out from behind the Iron Curtain to opening up countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for the company. Now close to 65, he is navigating the choppy waters of Indian politics as the Jannayak Janata Party-Aam Aadmi Party (JJP-AAP) alliance candidate for the Gurgaon parliamentary seat. 

'It was fate'

Inside the 'war room' -- the drawing room of his 12th-storey apartment in Gurugram serves as the campaign's headquarters at present -- Khan says there is something "beyond the normal" in his selection as the JJP-AAP candidate. While agreeing with her husband, Sanobar says "fate" would be the right word. 

Khan says he was returning from a vacation on the morning of April 13, when he got a call from "Omi Bhaiya" -- Om Prakash Kataria, a man he considers  his mentor and elder brother -- asking him if he would consider contesting the Lok Sabha elections. Khan consulted Sanobar. "I said go for it," she says. Khan claims that prior to that call, he had no association with the JJP and no contact with its leadership.  According to the couple, they had planned to be out of the country for most of May, June, July and August. "In the evening, Omi Bhaiya called again and asked me if I could come and meet the JJP leadership early next morning. So, I went," says Khan. It was only on the night of April 20 that the JJP told Khan that he would be their candidate. The official announcement was made the next day. 

Having been involved in the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption movement, Khan does have a prior 'association' with the Aam Aadmi Party. Khan claims he came up with the name Aam Aadmi Party and the concept behind it. "I made the suggestion to Arvind Kejriwal in September 2012. AAP would stand for 'aap ki party'. All Indians would feel it was their party," he says. 

As Khan recounts his journey from Mewat to London, it is clear that fate and chance have played a role throughout his life. "Unilever literally walked into my life. I was at an IIM network party in Bangalore and Unilever executives were among the guests. We had a conversation, and before the party ended, I was made an offer. From then, I spent 27 years at Unilever," he says. This was in 1982, when Khan had been working at Punjab Markfed, a marketing cooperative federation.   

Doing things the Unilever way

An MBA from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Khan's globe-trotting days with Unilever began when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The company needed someone in Rotterdam in Netherlands to go to the Eastern Bloc countries, which had begun to embrace the market economy, to set up Unilever businesses. Khan got transferred there in 1990 as Manager Pioneer Markets.  

Almost three years into his stint there, Khan told his bosses that the big opportunity was in Southeast Asia. They agreed. He got himself posted to Singapore and set up a Unilever regional office there. From his new base, Khan pioneered businesses in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. He brought LUX soap and Lipton tea to these countries. Khan also launched Dove, a beauty and personal care Unilever brand that started with soaps, in China.    

There were no market research agencies in Vietnam when Khan went to launch Lipton there. His colleagues warned that Vietnam was a 'coffee country'. Khan went to people's homes for a cup of tea and spoke to them. Often, he would reconnoitre their kitchens to see what brands they were using. "I was moving around in Hanoi, gathering my own insights," he says. During these years, Khan would convince officials, who had come up within a communist system, to give capitalism a chance. 

Facing established politicians, he is trying his hand at a somewhat similar conversion now. His political campaign is barely days old and depends on the personal touch. "Let's call it a campaign by tea. I am meeting people, speaking to them and converting them into voters. You have to touch people's hearts," says Khan, adding, "I don't want to run a campaign like the BJP or Congress. They are wasting money. For me, talking to people is more enjoyable."

In 1998, Khan went to Unilever's London headquarters as the Global Leader for Innovation Process Development, a position he would continue in till he left the company 11 years later. His job was to harmonise processes, systems and leadership across Unilever's 6,000 or so brands. "That is how I travelled to more than 75 countries," says Khan. His travels took him to Saddam Hussein-ruled Iraq, North Korea and Mongolia -- where Sanobar, also an entrepreneur, owns an Indian restaurant. 

Having left the company a decade ago, Khan still sets great store by its code of business principles. "I live Unilever values. You will live an honest life. Thy shall neither give a bribe nor take one. Thy shall respect other human beings, gender and diversity. My values and Unilever's code of business principles fit so well," he says. Khan insists that these values are a big part of his political campaign.   

Khan's 'Kurukshetra' 

Incumbent MP Rao Inderjit Singh is BJP's pick for Gurgaon. A former Congressman, he comes from an established political family. Inderjit Singh is the second son of former Haryana chief minister Rao Birender Singh. He also has the BJP's substantial electoral machinery behind him. Captain Ajay Singh Yadav is the Congress candidate. A six-time MLA, Yadav is also a former Haryana finance minister. 

Khan's opponents are seasoned politicians, but he sees fighting these polls as a call to duty. He invokes the Mahabharata. "The Kurukshetra war was decided in 18 days. The war pitted satya (truth) against asatya (lies), dharma (righteousness) against adharma (wickedness). Today, India is exactly in that situation. You cannot have governments being run on lies. It gives me internal strength," says Khan. The sudden nature of his candidacy and the fact that he filed his nomination on April 23 leave Khan with little more time than 18 days to win his battle. Haryana will vote in a single phase on May 12.

This is not the first time Khan has felt a calling. In 2009, he took an early retirement from Unilever and returned to India. For close to five years till then, Khan had divided his time between his full-time job and the work he had started in 2004 towards doing what he could to develop Mewat, his home district in Haryana. "If you read Vedic literature, humans move from one stage to another in life. At a certain age, a natural urge comes that I owe something to society," says Khan.

Apart from working through his charitable organisation, the Rasuli Kanwar Khan Trust, Khan roped in individuals, corporates and NGOs to collaborate towards Mewat's development. His work centred around girl education, livelihood and skill-development in rural Haryana. A computer training facility and a sewing centre were set up in Nai Nangla. Using his IIM and corporate network, Khan got executives from Genpact to help equip his facility with used computers and convinced education NGO Pratham to come to Mewat, where it had never operated before. Khan also founded the Janwaar Castle Community Organization to uplift lives of children in Janwaar, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, through creative methods -- among them, a skatepark they built in the village to drive up school enrolment and attendance. The organisation claims that the village's children go to school more often now because they have set up a rule: No school, no skateboarding.  

Khan is banking on both his reputation and contacts in the corporate world and the relationships he made during his years as a social entrepreneur. His campaign is being managed by Sheilza Malhotra, the founder of Janm Foundation -- an NGO that works on women empowerment and livelihood programmes in Mewat -- and an entrepreneur. Aqib Mohammed, a 26-year-old who has founded a start-up to provide safer sanitary pads for women, is running the digital campaign, which Khan says is one of the most powerful parts of his strategy. Mrutyunjay Mishra, a founding member of Janwaar Castle, is also involved in the campaign. All of them consider Khan their mentor.         

Khan claims that Gurugram's corporate leaders have taken an interest in his candidature. He says he knows most of these corporate executives, adding that he has also mentored some of them. "People forget that these executives are also voters. I am getting messages that they are campaigning for me and convincing voters. They feel it's their chance to elect someone they can approach and express their grievances to, unlike other politicians," says Khan, without naming any names. 

Khan is running his campaign on a five-point agenda: building up Gurugram, Rewari and Mewat's human capital; using design thinking to solve the region's urban planning, pollution and housing challenges; creating employment, developing skill training centres and encouraging self-employment; ensuring welfare, health, safety and empowerment for women and children; providing universal access to essential medicines and quality healthcare services. Khan is also focusing on the water crisis and farmers' distress in Mewat. In education and healthcare, he wants to implement the AAP government's learnings from Delhi in Gurugram. 

The challenges are significant. While a Greenpeace report showed Gurugram to be the most polluted city in the world in 2018, the NITI Aayog has identified Mewat as India's most backward district. 

If he wins, Khan is also banking on the corporate world to come forward and participate in finding solutions to the problems his campaign promises to address.