Sanjiv Mehta (Indian businessman)

Sanjiv Mehta (born 1959/1960) is an Indian business executive, and the former chairman and managing director (MD) of Hindustan Unilever Limited, India's largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company and one of the top five most valuable companies in India. Mehta became the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever in October 2013, and in June 2018 was appointed chairman. He also heads Unilever's business in South Asia, as cluster president encompassing businesses in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Mehta is a member of the Unilever leadership executive, its global executive board.
Born in Kanpur, Mehta studied in Mumbai and Nagpur. He is a chartered accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and later completed the Advanced Management Programme from the Harvard Business School.
He began his career in 1983 with Union Carbide. Early in his career, he was part of the crisis management team that worked on the Bhopal Gas tragedy in 1984. Since then, to date, he has been known to start most meetings by reviewing the safety agenda. In 1998, he joined the board of Unilever Bangladesh as its commercial director. In April 2002 he was appointed as the chairman and managing director of Unilever Bangladesh. Under his leadership, Unilever Bangladesh went on to become the crown jewel of Unilever's parent company given its competitive growth and stellar performance. In 2007, he moved to Manila as the chairman of Unilever Philippines, and in 2008 was appointed as the chairman of Unilever North Africa and Middle East (NAME). In 2013, he took over Unilever's business in India and South Asia, as Chairman and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL).
Under his leadership, in seven years HUL's market capitalisation increased from $17 billion to over $70 billion, making HUL the top five most valuable companies in India, as well as Asia's largest consumer staples company. HUL is now the second-largest Unilever business in the world.
With Sanjiv at the helm of the company, HUL has won several awards, including prestigious Economic Times' Company of the Year' & 'Corporate Citizen of the Year' awards, Business Standard's 'Company of the year' award and the Asian Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability's 'Best Governed Company'. Forbes has also rated HUL the 8th most innovative company in the world and the most innovative company in India. A global study by Aon Hewitt ranked HUL as the 3rd best Company globally for building leaders behind GE and IBM.
Mehta is a firm believer of "doing well by doing good". Under him HUL has taken on and expanded several initiatives that have a far-reaching societal and environmental impact. Through the Hindustan Unilever Foundation and its community partners, water potential of more than 1.3 trillion litres has been created by democratizing water management in villages across India. Further, under the Shakti program, over 136 thousand Shakti women entrepreneurs have been empowered in rural India. Other than that HUL's ongoing health and hygiene initiatives have impacted more than 154 million people all over the country.
In 2021, Sanjiv took over as the President of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, India's largest and oldest apex business organizations.
Mehta grew up in Mumbai and is the son of SP Mehta and Anita Mehta. His parents were uprooted during the partition of India. His father was a retired senior executive with Reserve Bank of India. He is married to Mona Mehta, who too is a chartered accountant and they have twin daughters Naina and Roshni who have studied at Cornell, MIT and Harvard University respectively.
Ex-President of FICCI
Non-Executive Independent Board member of Air India Limited, TATA Group since 2022
Member of South Asia Advisory Board of Harvard Business School
Co-chairs the Advisory Network to the High-Level Panel for a ‘Sustainable Ocean Economy’
Chairs ‘Vikaasa’, a coalition of top Indian and MNC companies
Director of Board of Indian School of Business
Member of the Breach Candy Hospital Trust