MUMBAI: 6 December will end up being a memorable day for Rajesh Sethuraman. That is the day when the CEO of Godrej Indonesia was given an additional responsibility by the management of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) in Mumbai led by Sudhir Sitapati: to lead the group’s business transformation and digital agenda. GCPL made the appointment public by sending it to the Bombay stock exchange as is required by responsible and transparent companies.
The reason the responsibility was thrust on him was because the executive responsible for business transformation and digital Vijay Kannan at GCPL Mumbai was relocating to be with family in the United Kingdom.
Sethuraman is known to be a hardworking and focused senior executive who gets things done. The engineering graduate, and MBA from XLRI began his career as a product executive in Heinz India. From global brand manager -Radiant in Hindustan Unilever, he quickly rose to regional category leader south Asia laundry and then was moved to south Africa as vice-president Africa laundry.
His performance saw him being quickly promoted to vice-president home care division Africa. He once again shone over there and was transported back to Mumbai to help the mothership accelerate growth by rewiring its operation to deliver a superior customer experience. And in his words :”Unlock this across core sales and planning operations right through order to cash. Leverage external industry leading partners to deliver an integrated process tech and org combination which is future fit.”
That brought him to the notice of the GCPL management led by Sitapati -a former Hindustan Unilever man himself and who had worked with him while he was there - which made him an offer to build Godrej Indonesia and establish it as a best in class entity in Indonesia.
Which he has been in the process of doing. Rather successfully. Hence, the additional responsibility. Because Sethuraman is an executive who knows how to get things done, and mostly in time.
“He has previously led the digital transformation of Unilever’s operations across many markets in core sales and planning operations, from order to cash processes, successfully designing integrated operations, and leveraging technology and partnerships for business success,” GCPL informed the BSE in the regulatory filing.
