TATA S BIG CONSUMER BET

WHEN SUNIL D’SOUZA TOOK charge of the just-born Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) in April 2020, a strong sense of déjà vu was unavoidable. Similarities between his previous employer—American home appliances major Whirlpool—and the new organisation were plenty. Whirlpool had strong brand recall and trust among local consumers. So did TCPL’s brands such as Tata Tea and Tata Salt. However, both Whirlpool and TCPL (and its earlier avatar Tata Global Beverages or TGBL) were lacklustre in their approach towards market dynamics, were averse to rapid change and had made minimum investments in brand building. At a time when their competitors were aggressively expanding, they mostly remained on the sidelines.

In mid-2015, when D’Souza joined Whirlpool as the managing director for its India unit, the mandate from its global management was clear—to grow the business to a $1-billion company and capture 20 per cent share of the market by 2020. While it already had the advantage of having a strong brand, it needed to accelerate the innovation pipeline and ramp up distribution. At TCPL, D’Souza found a similar