Colgate has reached into its past for its next CEO. The oral care leader has brought back 13-year company veteran Manish Anandani as Managing Director and CEO, effective September 28, succeeding current MD & CEO Prabha Narasimhan, who is moving to a larger Asia-Pacific role. Anandani’s task is firmly focused on the future: finding Colgate India’s next growth engine.
He inherits some unfinished business. Days before the announcement, Narasimhan acknowledged during an August 17 analyst call that Palmolive had underperformed. “We haven’t done a great job with Palmolive,” she said. Global CEO Noel Wallace had earlier acknowledged that the India business had become “distracted” by its Ayurveda push.
Yet this is not a conventional turnaround story. Colgate states that its premium portfolio grew five times faster than the broader market during Narasimhan’s tenure. Nuvama welcomed Anandani’s appointment, stating that the leadership ‘overhang goes away’ and highlighting his expertise in sales, marketing, and e-commerce.
The bigger challenge is managing two Indias. One segment buys toothpaste through neighbourhood stores, where ₹10 and ₹20 packs remain critical; the other is trading up to specialised oral-care products and increasingly shopping through e-commerce and quick commerce channels. Premium toothpaste accounts for less than 19 per cent of the category, leaving considerable headroom for growth.
There is another growth opportunity: increasing consumption itself.
“About 76 per cent of urban Indians and 45 per cent of rural consumers still do not brush twice daily, while the average toothbrush replacement period is around nine months. For the market leader, encouraging existing consumers to use more oral care products can be just as important as gaining market share,” said an industry analyst tracking the sector.
“Anandani knows the Colgate machine, but he returns to a very different consumer market,” said Kranti Bhathini, Director, Equity Strategy at WealthMills Securities. “He has to revive momentum in urban general trade and protect the ₹10-20 entry-price consumer while simultaneously accelerating premiumisation and extracting more growth from e-commerce and quick commerce.”
Anandani brings three decades of FMCG experience, including a 13-year stint at Colgate across India, Southeast Asia, and global roles before his exit in 2018. For Colgate, the bet is on an old hand to solve a new growth equation: protect the mass consumer, persuade another segment to trade up, and encourage both to consume more oral-care products.
Anandani has been with Kenvue/J&J Consumer Health since 2018 and he was elevated as MD in 2022.
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