When HUL’s new CEO Rohit Jawa drove through dacoit-infested areas for a cheque

Rohit Jawa has been with HUL for 35 years. (Image credit: Rohit Jawa/LinkedIn)

Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has appointed Rohit Jawa as its next managing director and chief executive officer. Jawa, 56, started his career with HUL as a management trainee in 1988. During the course of 35 years with Unilever, he has served in key managerial roles and has been credited for leading the transformation of Unilever businesses in China and in Philippines.

An interesting anecdote from Rohit Jawa’s days as a trainee is documented in the book ‘The CEO Factory: Management Lessons from Hindustan Unilever’ by Sudhir Sitapati. When Jawa was training in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, he received information that a distributor’s cheque had bounced.

Jawa finished his dinner and rode his bike through the dacoit-infested areas of the region to collect the cheque in person. It was after 10 pm in the night when he knocked on the distributor’s door and demanded he hand over the money that was rightfully the company’s. The distributor caved, and Jawa left with the cash.

Another incident illustrates the leadership skills and result-oriented thinking that Jawa displayed early on in his career. In the 1990s, as a young sales manager in Rajasthan, he managed to increase sales in the state by as much as 30 per cent. Jawa realised that “the moment he reduced the distance between a distributor and an outlet, sales would go up,” Sitapati wrote in The CEO Factory.

He bought a census of Rajasthan and mapped out all the areas where a distributor could be appointed – a painstaking task to say the least, but it produced the desired results. Jawa grew the distributors network from the previous 100 to 168, and sales grew from 12–13 per cent to 30 per cent.

These, of course, are just two of many notable instances from Jawa’s time with Unilever, where he is currently the Chief of Transformation in London. As the chairman of Unilever Philippines, Jawa led the business to become one of the top 10 markets for Unilever globally, the company said.