Marico, the Indian consumer-goods company I founded and still lead as chairman, was conceived around product innovation. I was a young man working at Bombay Oil Industries, the family firm that my father and grandfather had incorporated in 1948, which made and sold edible oils, oleo chemicals, and spice extracts in bulk. It was a commodity business with fluctuating margins and low growth, but I’d spent enough time analyzing our offerings and operations, traveling around India to observe consumer behavior across various regions, and talking to the end users of our products to see a hidden opportunity: We could do better by selling our oils in smaller branded units. I knew how traditional Indian businesses were run, but having visited the United States, I could see different market dynamics bubbling up. The task was clear: We should launch a small consumer-products division within the parent company.
Marico’s Chairman on Innovating Across Every Part of the Business
When the author launched what would become Marico as a division within his family’s business, Bombay Oil, it was with product innovation: Instead of selling edible oils in bulk to other businesses, it would sell in smaller, branded packages directly to consumers. Eventually the division became a separate entity, which is now one of India’s largest homegrown CPG companies. Its growth has depended on constant innovation—around not just products, packaging, and pricing but also supply chain, talent management, and business models. Over the past decade Marico has branched out into services with its Kaya skin-care spas, pioneered the use of premium hair oils, and added savory oats to Indian diets. Through the Marico Innovation Foundation, Mariwala also promotes innovative thinking outside the company, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs in their efforts to scale up new ideas. The key to doing that well, he says, is to be ever curious about customer needs, to create a flat hierarchy that rewards risk-taking, to learn from every failure, and to constantly prototype, experiment, refine, and retest.
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