Quiet achievers Gopal Vittal and Neville Noronha leave behind key lessons in partnership

Neville Noronha will move out of DMart by the year end. Photograph by Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
Neville Noronha will move out of DMart by the year end. Photograph by Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

Summary

  • How DMart and Airtel navigate the choppy waters of the future will be a test of the resilience that the departing CEOs have built into their foundations

Two top business leaders who haven't been celebrated enough but whose achievements are part of business school curriculum, will soon relinquish their long-held jobs. A couple of months ago, Gopal Vittal announced that he would step down as CEO of Bharti Airtel at the end of 2025. Recently, Neville Noronha has said he will move out of the corner office at Avenue Supermarts, where he built DMart into the country’s most successful supermarket chain, in January 2026.

Both men are products of the renowned Hindustan Unilever (HUL) school of business leadership, having put in time at the FMCG major prior to being picked for their current jobs.

That isn’t the only common thread that binds them.

Over the course of the 12 years that he headed Airtel, Vittal transformed the company, first by weathering the vagaries of a hypercompetitive market comprising a dozen telcos and then by ensuring survival in the face of the brutal price war unleashed by Reliance Jio. Airtel came through that ordeal stronger and sharper, as its current 20% higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than that of Jio shows.

Also Read: Gopal Vittal at Airtel: A stint of multiple challenges, in charts

Noronha, too, has been a super achiever. In his 18 years at the helm, he steered DMart from a handful of stores to a 387-store powerhouse with a market cap of 2.3 trillion, a four-fold rise from 2017 when it was listed.

Winning formula

Under them, their companies stuck to the basics, shunning the adventurism that spelt doom for many of their rivals. Noronha’s mantra “retail is detail" sums up the approach though the company’s strategy of owning most of its stores to keep operational costs low is more shrewd than that suggests.

Significantly, both men kept a low profile, ensuring that the success of Airtel and Dmart was seen as that of their promoters, Sunil Mittal and Radhakishan Damani, respectively.

Given their track record it is easy to hail their achievements today, but years ago when the two were hired by Damani and Mittal, these were truly inspired choices. Therein lies the lesson for other companies looking for leaders who can emulate the success of these two veterans.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Airtel
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Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Airtel

The jugalbandi (duet) of a visionary promoter with a deep understanding of the business and a hands-on CEO who can convert that vision to reality creates a perfect symphony. The prerequisite, though, is complete trust between the two and the freedom for the CEO to execute his plans without having to look over his shoulder. Damani, DMart’s biggest shareholder with a 74.65% stake, isn’t even on the board of the company, though his daughter Manjri Chandak is.

Though rare, there are other examples of this winning formula. At Infosys, co-founder Nandan Nilekani as non-executive chairman and Salil Parekh as CEO have placed the company firmly back on the growth path after the controversies of 2017 when Vishal Sikka was eased out, leading to turmoil within and without.

It doesn’t take great insight to say that harmony between a company’s top two executives is essential to business success. Way too many companies, though, have got it wrong. Infosys’s city-based rival Wipro, for instance, hadn’t got the mix right for nearly 20 years. The company was a pace-setter for the industry through the 1990s and early 2000s when first Ashok Soota and then Vivek Paul guided its fortunes as professional CEOs under promoter Azim Premji. Subsequently, the model of Premji as chairman and a series of professional CEOs failed to deliver. Today, Wipro trails market leaders TCS, Infosys and HCL.

It doesn’t take great insight to say that harmony between a company’s top two executives is essential to business success. Way too many companies, though, have got it wrong.

That sheds light on another feature of a CEO’s job. Vittal will be succeeded by an internal candidate, Shashwat Sharma, the company’s chief operating officer. That ensures continuity, shows that he had prepared for his eventual departure and had groomed someone to take charge. It’s a key responsibility for any leader, but one which most tend to ignore.

DMart, by contrast, is dipping into the HUL talent bank again, picking Anshul Asawa, the country head of Unilever Thailand. Asawa’s past experience which includes driving digitisation efforts at HUL and product innovations for homecare categories is exactly what the retail giant needs at this point.

Paradoxically, their legacies place a question mark over the future of the companies they are leaving. Airtel faces the challenge of raising its ARPU, which at 233 is still well below the 300 that its chairman Mittal has targeted.

Dmart, on its part, faces intensified competition and changing market dynamics, which will test its pricing-based model. In addition, there is a growing threat from digital commerce and quick commerce. While Noronha told Mint in an interview that he doesn’t fret overly about e-commerce, customers who are now used to having their bread delivered before the eggs have finished boiling will be difficult to wean away.

How DMart and Airtel navigate the choppy waters of the future will also be a test of the resilience that the departing CEOs have built into their foundations. Companies have been known to lose their way after an influential leader leaves following a long and successful tenure.

Also read | For DMart, quick commerce threat comes to the fore

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