MAM
Purnima Lamba joins Mahindra Group as chief brand officer
Former Unilever global brand leader brings nearly 25 years of marketing experience
MUMBAI: Mahindra’s brand story is getting a fresh pair of hands and they come with plenty of brand mileage. Purnima Lamba has joined the Mahindra Group as Chief Brand Officer, bringing nearly 25 years of experience in brand building and marketing across India, the UK and the Netherlands.
Lamba moves to Mahindra after a 24-year, five-month stint at Unilever, where she worked across several of the company’s major beauty and personal care brands, including Lakmé, Sunsilk, TRESemmé and Vaseline. Her most recent position was Global Brand Vice President for Knorr, a role she held from December 2025 to July 2026 in Rotterdam.
In her new role, Lamba will lead Mahindra Group’s corporate brand and communications strategy, with a focus on sharpening the group’s brand narrative and ensuring greater consistency across its businesses and platforms.
Her Unilever career began in March 2002 as Brand Manager, where she worked on consumer-led new product development and communications for Lakmé, Lux and Dove until February 2009. She then spent three years and two months as Brand Director, managing the skincare portfolio across South Asia.
From April 2012 to March 2018, she served as Head of Innovation at Lakmé, working on the cosmetics and skincare strategy and business. She subsequently became Global Brand Vice President in April 2018, a role in which she led the transformation of Fair & Lovely into Glow & Lovely, before moving through global brand leadership roles.
Lamba was Global Brand Vice President for Sunsilk from August 2021 to July 2022, followed by Global Brand Lead for TRESemmé from July 2022 to April 2024. She then took charge of Vaseline as Global Brand Vice President from May 2024 to December 2025, before moving to Knorr.
Before her Unilever career, Lamba was CEO of Soulkurry.com from October 1999 to April 2001, where she worked on an early web portal designed to connect women with their goals.
Her academic background includes an MSc in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science, completed between 1996 and 1997, following a BSc in Management from 1993 to 1996.
At Mahindra, the focus now shifts from building individual consumer brands to shaping the corporate identity of a diversified group giving Lamba a much broader canvas on which to put her quarter-century of brand experience to work.
