Bhavna Verma exits HUL after five years, marking end of POND’S leadership stint

MUMBAI: Bhavna Verma has marked the end of a five-year stint at Hindustan Unilever, closing a chapter that saw her lead POND’S through brand-building, portfolio growth and a push to make the legacy beauty brand more relevant to younger consumers.

Verma shared the news on LinkedIn, reflecting on her time at the company and highlighting the lessons she picked up while working on iconic brands. Her most recent role was global brand director, POND’S, a position she took up in August 2024 after spending three years as marketing manager for the brand.

At POND’S, Verma was responsible for brand strategy and growth across the South Asian subcontinent. Her profile states that she led a portfolio worth Rs 2,500 crore, with responsibility for competitive and profitable growth, brand equity, innovation and the longer-term brand strategy.

One of the most visible chapters of her POND’S tenure was the return of the brand’s much-remembered Googly Woogly Wooksh property for a Gen Z audience.

For Verma, the exercise was more than a nostalgia play. She described the revival as an example of how legacy brands can remain relevant by being brought back into contemporary culture rather than simply preserved as memories.

In her farewell post, she outlined five lessons from her career. The first was that playing safe can leave brands unnoticed in an increasingly crowded market.

Her second centred on consumer understanding, arguing that brands need to uncover the problems and frustrations consumers may not articulate openly rather than create ideas that solve little.

She also emphasised the role of emotion in brand building, arguing that consumers often remember how a brand made them feel more than the precise details of a product claim.

Another lesson was around making choices and sticking with them. Verma said marketers need to prioritise ruthlessly and execute with conviction, while her final point was that iconic brands can lose relevance through stagnation rather than age.

Verma joined Unilever in July 2021 as marketing manager for POND’S before moving into the global brand director role in August 2024.

Her work at POND’S covered communication, innovation and brand strategy, with a focus on building relevance among younger audiences while delivering business growth.

The experience built on an earlier career at Reckitt, where Verma spent more than eight years across brand management, sales and marketing roles.

She joined Reckitt in 2013 as a management trainee and went on to work across brands including Dermicool, Strepsils, Veet and Dettol.

As senior brand manager for Veet, she handled brand strategy, consumer insights, 360-degree communication, media planning, innovation and the brand’s P&L. She also worked on Veet’s regional business across 24 countries covering Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

At Dettol, Verma worked on the SiTi Shield brand and its positioning around pollution protection in India. Her responsibilities included communication, go-to-market strategy and brand development.

Her Reckitt career also included an area sales manager role in South Gujarat, where she managed the health, hygiene and home portfolio across 13 districts and the union territories of Daman and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Earlier, she worked at Colgate-Palmolive as a sales and marketing intern.

Verma’s career has moved steadily from frontline sales and marketing into large-scale brand and P&L leadership.

She holds an MBA in sales and marketing from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, where she was also part of the marketing club’s core committee and helped organise the institute’s annual marketing symposium.

Her five-year run at HUL has now come to an end, with Verma thanking her teams, mentors, leaders and agency partners for the journey.

The next chapter remains undisclosed, although she has indicated that more details are coming soon. For now, her HUL tenure closes with a fitting marketing lesson of its own: even the most familiar brands need a fresh reason to matter.