BackAll in the family: Nisaba and Pirojsha Godrej
Nisaba Godrej is credited with turning around Godrej Agrovet; younger brother Pirojsha runs the real estate business
Premium(Pirojsha Godrej, managing director and CEO of Godrej Properties.)
All three children of Godrej group chairman Adi Godrej have joined the business in various roles. Harvard Business School alum Tanya Dubash, 44, has been with Godrej for the past 22 years and is executive director and president, marketing, and heads the strategic marketing group.
Attention is now focused on the younger two Godrej children—Nisaba and Pirojsha— who joined the family business more recently.
Nisaba Godrej, 34 and an alumnus of Harvard and Wharton, drives human resource policies and innovation at Godrej Industries Ltd and its associate companies. She wants Godrej to attract and develop outstanding talent and make the culture more agile and innovative.
She’s also credited with turning around Godrej Agrovet Ltd, now one of the fastest-growing units of the group.
Forbes magazine said in November that she has her father’s ear “and is able to influence his big decisions with her logic". Regarded as persuasive and able to get her way on most things, she’s seen by some as Adi Godrej’s natural successor.
She instituted a design and innovation cell in 2010 and has since been working closely with the Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) team on strategy. There’s a five-year road map for the packaged consumer goods portfolio, which involves outlining category choices and instituting an M&A (mergers and acquisition) cell. The company has made several acquisitions in the past few years.
GCPL recently re-launched products under the Cinthol brand toward this end, targeting the youth market.
Nisaba Godrej also drives the group’s corporate social responsibility strategy and is the point person for the operations of the Godrej Family Council. She is on the boards of GCPL and Godrej Agrovet, besides Teach for India and the Heroes Project, both social endeavours. Aside from business, her passions include women’s education, trekking, and equestrian and water sports.
Younger brother Pirojsha Godrej, 31, runs the real estate business of the conglomerate as managing director of Godrej Properties Ltd (GPL). Articulate and personable, he’s been a hit at press briefings and with shareholders at annual general meetings.
With an undergraduate degree from Wharton Business School and a post-graduate one from Columbia, he was a management trainee at GPL from 2004 to 2006. He interned at the ministry of external affairs in the summer of 2003 and has numerous research papers to his credit.
Moulishree Srivastava contributed to this story.
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