Guntas Randhawa joins Reckitt as regional marketing director, health South Asia

MUMBAI: From vitamins to Dettol, Guntas Randhawa is swapping one household shelf for another. After 17 years at Unilever, the last stretch as India head of the vitamins, minerals and supplements division at Hindustan Unilever, Randhawa has joined Reckitt as regional marketing director for health in South Asia. “A new chapter begins!” he says.

The portfolio is a marketer’s dream. Randhawa calls it a real privilege to work with brands that are such a familiar part of people’s lives: Dettol, Durex, Moov and an incredible portfolio of over-the-counter (OTC) brands such as Strepsils and Gaviscon. What excites him most is the chance to steward brands with extraordinary trust, while reimagining how they stay relevant and distinctive with the next generation of consumers.

He arrives with a clear point of view. Randhawa says he is looking forward to learning from a new business, a new culture and a fantastic team, while bringing his own experiences, perspectives and a healthy appetite to challenge how things have always been done. His summing up is brisk: lots to learn, lots to build, and a very exciting chapter ahead.

The résumé explains the confidence. Randhawa describes his work as scaling health and wellness brands, spanning supplements and premium digital-first businesses, with proven profit-and-loss (P&L) ownership and a focus on long-term growth. His 17 years and six months at Unilever began in May 2009 and ran through to the present.

Most recently, he has been India head of the vitamins, minerals and supplements division at Hindustan Unilever since January 2023, based in Mumbai, with skills spanning product innovation and digital marketing. Before that he was global brand director from January 2019 to April 2023. There he led the creation and global rollout of core innovation projects, with customised mixes for each cluster: South Asia, South East Asia and Africa. His strengths included project management, brand mix and communication development. That covered proposition and concept development, packaging development, fragrance and chassis evaluation for product development, and communication development, including designing a brand experience toolkit customised by market.

The brand years came before. Randhawa was brand manager from July 2013 to April 2019 in Mumbai, a stint of five years and ten months. His responsibilities included developing and deploying campaigns and activations to build brand salience and strengthen equity, designing consumer and trade promotions across channels, and managing a network of stakeholders across supply chain, production, commercial, legal, sales and research and development teams to ensure timely delivery of projects. The trophies followed. He was awarded for “Best deployment by a brand” in 2014, and for “Best use of traditional media” in 2014.

The sales grounding is just as striking. As customer development manager for modern trade in Delhi NCR from January 2010 to June 2013, Randhawa was responsible for delivering quarterly growth plans and best-in-class execution. He led a team of more than 200 HUL and third-party employees, crafted joint business plans with regional customers, including distributors and regional retailers, and managed regional distribution and sales delivery for all national customers present in Delhi NCR. He also led a national project to restructure the third-party team of product consultants in order to reduce attrition.

The awards from those years read like a scoreboard. Randhawa won recognition for the highest quarterly growth plan delivery nationally in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and for the highest growth nationally in 2010 and 2011. He was recognised for exemplary customer and consumer centricity in 2012, and received the CEO Compass award for best channel performance in 2011. He began at Unilever as a business leadership trainee from May 2009 to January 2010.

The first career was in code. From July 2005 to March 2008 Randhawa was a software developer at Computer Sciences Corporation in the Noida area. He was responsible for business reporting, project deliveries and support, managing customer relationship management tools and dealing with multiple clients in the US. He drove project execution from the pilot stage of a three-member team to a full-time project with a nine-member cross-cultural team. The project involved reporting through CRM tools on all healthcare products for accurate cost accounting and trend analysis.

The analysis is simple. Randhawa has sold in trade, run brands, led global innovation and owned a P&L in supplements, and he now moves into a portfolio built on trust. Few marketers have seen a category from the distributor’s counter to the global brand toolkit. For Reckitt, that is a rounded hire with an appetite to challenge the way things have always been done.