Brands
Sunanda Khaitan appointed CMO, beauty & wellbeing at HUL
MUMBAI: Hindustan Unilever has handed the reins of its beauty and wellbeing portfolio to a familiar face. Sunanda Khaitan has been appointed chief marketing officer for the category, marking a new milestone in her nearly two-decade-long journey with Unilever.
Khaitan steps into the role after a successful stint as vice president and business head of Lakmē, where she sharpened the brand’s premium edge while keeping it firmly rooted in mass appeal. Her elevation signals continuity with confidence for one of HUL’s most competitive and culturally influential businesses.
Khaitan’s career reads like a guided tour of Unilever’s beauty playbook. From cutting her teeth in sales to shaping global narratives for brands such as Fair and Lovely, Citra and Ponds, she has worked across markets, categories and consumer mindsets. Her time as global brand director for Haircare further added an international lens to her leadership.
What sets her apart is range. Few marketers can claim equal fluency in street level sales realities and global brand strategy. At HUL, she has moved steadily from area sales manager to the top marketing role, gathering insights, instincts and credibility along the way.
As Beauty and Wellbeing continues to evolve, blending science, self care and storytelling, Khaitan’s appointment feels timely. With deep brand knowledge and a knack for staying relevant, she now has the task of keeping HUL’s beauty portfolio both future ready and firmly in the public imagination.
For Unilever, it is a homegrown leader stepping into the spotlight. For the category, it is a steady hand with a sharp eye on what consumers want next.
Brands
YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
