Executive Chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products | Chair since 2017 | Mumbai
Swimming back from the sea
Nisaba Godrej, known as Nisa, was born in 1978, the youngest daughter of Adi Godrej and Parmeshwar Godrej. Her siblings are Tanya Dubash and Pirojsha Godrej. She went to the Cathedral & John Connon School in Mumbai.
Her father raised his children outdoors. “He’d drop us in the sea at Juhu and ask us to swim back,” she told Business Today in 2021. “A lot of my personality came from doing all these outdoor activities with my father.” She took up horse riding young and kept at it. The lesson she took from it, she said, was that “if you want that horse to go over the jump, you have to stay on the jump. You have to have tenacity.”
She went to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for her undergraduate degree. In early 2000, Business Today reported in 2014, she interned at Godrej Sara Lee under A. Mahendran. She then went to Harvard Business School for an MBA.
The agri business, and the resignations
After business school she joined the group’s agri business, Godrej Agrovet. It was losing money. She was there to help turn it around, and she wanted to change the leadership.
It did not go smoothly. “I did resign three-four times and this is going back about 15 years,” she told Business Today in 2021. She said she “kept getting told that my values were wrong because, you know, at Godrej we stick with our people.” She was also told she was being negative. Her answer, she said, was that it was “the bottom line that was negative, not me.”
She stayed, and she gave her father the credit for that, with a joke: “my father probably realised that no one else was going to employ me.” Over time, she said, she learned to influence people, manage her frustration and get things done.
The changes went through. Mahendran told Business Today in 2014 that she brought in a completely new management team. “She turned around the loss-making Godrej Agrovet into a profitable entity in just about 18 to 24 months,” he said. She joined the Agrovet board in 2008. That year she also hired Mark Kahn, a Harvard classmate, as executive vice-president at Agrovet. BW Businessworld reported in 2020 that this opened the door to foreign hires in senior roles across the group.
Strategy, people and innovation
In 2007 she was a central figure in Project Leapfrog, a group growth plan built on innovation and consolidation, DNA India and BW Businessworld reported. By 2010 Business Today described her as President of Human Capital and Innovation, heading human resources and innovation for the group. She also worked on corporate strategy for Godrej Industries and its associate companies.
On people, she was direct. Business Today reported in 2014 that she said she hires people smarter than herself, had no tolerance for mediocrity and had brought in many managers aged 25 to 30. Vivek Gambhir, who joined GCPL from Bain & Company in 2009 as chief strategy officer, called her “the key architect” of its transformation.
Building Godrej Consumer Products
As executive director of Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL), she helped reshape its portfolio. “When we merged Sara Lee with GCPL in 2010, we took a hard look at our portfolio,” she told Business Today. Revenue rose from ₹3,643 crore in 2010-11 to ₹7,583 crore in 2013-14, and nearly 30% of it came from new products. Products launched under her watch included the ₹1 Good Knight Fast Card mosquito repellent and Hit Anti-Roach Gel.
She also set targets beyond revenue. In 2014, women were about 13% of Godrej’s workforce, and she wanted that to reach at least 30% within a couple of years, Business Today reported. Her stated goal for GCPL was to be “10 times our current size 10 years from now.”
At home, life went on alongside it. BW Businessworld reported that she went back to work about a month after her son was born and often brought him to the office.
2017: the chair
On 10 May 2017 Adi Godrej stepped down as chairman of GCPL and she became executive chairperson, at 38. DNA India reported that GCPL’s market value had risen about twentyfold, from ₹3,000 crore to ₹60,000 crore, over the years she had been closely involved. BW Businessworld described her as the youngest chairperson of a company of that size, with consolidated revenue of about ₹9,600 crore at the time. “I look forward to the continued guidance of the chairman emeritus,” she said.
In 2020, during the pandemic, she also took on the managing director role. She later handed the chief executive’s job to Sudhir Sitapati, a Hindustan Unilever veteran, and stayed on as executive chairperson. “Leadership can be a lonely business and having someone to travel that journey with is wonderful,” she told Business Today.
Beyond the company
She sits on the board of Teach For India, which places graduates and professionals as teachers in low-income schools. She has led the Godrej group’s Good & Green social programme and the operations of the Godrej Family Council, BW Businessworld reported.
She describes herself as an introvert. “I don’t love people so much generally, but I do love the people I am close to,” she said. She has also said she thinks of herself less as a Godrej and more as an Indian woman.
Honest about what isn’t working
The years after 2021 were not all smooth. GCPL’s revenue and EBITDA each grew only about 2% in FY25, Entrepreneur India reported, with India volumes up 5%. She did not dress it up. The company had “dropped a few of our own balls” in categories including household insecticides and deodorants, she said, exchange4media reported.
Her message in 2025 sounded a lot like the argument she had made at Agrovet. “If we want to be wildly successful, market-level growth is not enough,” she said. “We must move faster, be more honest about what’s not working, resist blaming the macro too easily.” She tied that to “the Godrej Way, where high performance, deep principles and joyful leadership come together,” and said building GCPL meant “putting people and planet alongside profit.”
The numbers improved. Sitapati’s resignation letter reported revenue up 19% and underlying volume up 9% in the June 2026 quarter, exchange4media reported.
Where she stands now
In August 2026 Sitapati stepped down as GCPL’s managing director and CEO, days after shareholders approved his reappointment. Aasif Malbari took over on 12 August, People Matters reported. “Aasif brings deep command of GCPL’s strategic and operating rhythm,” Nisaba Godrej said. She also said the company’s “execution rigor has to go up seriously.” She remains executive chairperson.
About two decades after she was told her values were wrong, she chairs the group’s consumer company. The changes she pushed for at Agrovet were where it started.
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Cover photo: supplied to Sakhi Sangini.
Sources: Business Today (July 2010; August 2014; November 2021); BW Businessworld (April 2020); DNA India (May 2017); People Matters (August 2026); Entrepreneur India (July 2025); exchange4media (September 2026); Wikipedia, Nisa Godrej.
