By Nandan Mandayam and Nishit Navin
(Reuters) -Hindustan Unilever named former Hero MotoCorp CEO Niranjan Gupta as its finance chief on Thursday, succeeding Ritesh Tiwari who will move to a global role at parent Unilever.
Gupta will take charge as CFO of consumer goods maker Unilever’s Indian unit from November 1.
He began his career at Hindustan Unilever in 1994, spending 12 years there before a nearly seven-year stint at Unilever, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Gupta’s most recent stint was at motorcycle maker Hero MotoCorp, where he spent nearly eight years and was the CEO from May 2023 to April 2025.
Tiwari will relocate to London to assume the role of Global Head of M&A and Treasury at Unilever.
The management shake up comes over a month after the company named Priya Nair as its new chief executive, with Rohit Jawa stepping down before the completion of his five-year term as CEO.
“The CFO change aligns with the broader leadership reshuffle underway, especially with a new CEO coming in. HUL has underperformed on growth over the past couple of years, which has made a leadership overhaul necessary,” said Akshay D’Souza, an independent consumer goods consultant.
HUL, which is home to brands such as Dove soap and Surf Excel detergent, has been under pressure from dull urban consumption trends for several quarters. But analysts see the company’s quarterly results last month as reflective of a gradually easing environment.
Shares of HUL have risen 13% since Tiwari took charge as CFO in 2021, trailing a basket of consumer goods stocks which rose 50% in the same period.
HUL’s stock has jumped 10% since naming Nair as its new CEO on July 10, outperforming the Nifty FMCG index’s 1% gain.
The Indian federal government’s plan to lower and simplify tax rates on several goods is also expected to benefit consumer goods firms like HUL by driving demand for everything from jams to personal care goods.
(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam and Nishit Navin in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
