Zaved Akhtar, CEO & MD Unilever Bangladesh: World's Best Emerging Leader 2022

WCRCLEADERS in conversation with Zaved Akhtar, MD & CEO, Unilever, Bangladesh

Zaved Akhtar, MD & CEO, Unilever Bangladesh

What makes a strong leader? What are your key leadership strengths are make the strongest attributes of success?

A strong leader is someone who has a strong sense of empathy and is also equally aware of his or her vulnerability. One must have a compassionate spirit that ensures that one is able to understand his or her perspective and is able to emphasize. At the same time having the self-recognition of personal weakness keeps the individual grounded. But both this must be backed by a strong sense of purpose and holding self and others to high standards of performance.

An acco m p l is h m e n t t h a t yo u c on sider t o b e t h e m o s t si g nifi c a n t in your c ar e er? What challenges did you face to reach to the success?

In my earlier role I had taken on the transformation agenda of Reimagine HUL, building an intelligent enterprise . This was one of the biggest change management programs. Given the advent of multitude of technologies, disruption is becoming par for the course across industries, FMCG is no exception. Platforms are taking over products, channels are getting redefined and new business models are surfacing that has opportunities beyond sales. As FMCG, we have enough blind spots and our agility and digital astuteness is not at par with the new insurgents.

At Hindustan Unilever (HUL) , as the incumbent in the FMCG industry , we are pre-empting this disruption by being an insurgent and orchestrating a holistic intervention across our value chain by experimenting with different technology centric projects that will change the way we will work in the future. Christened as Reimagine HUL, this program is an integrated set of initiatives that will give us a distinctive competitive edge. The specific benefits that we envisage are:

Unlock foresight/insight/trends to meet consumer needs with unprecedented speed

Help obtain a distinctive technology driven business model that will give us get a competitive edge

Appropriate a large part of the value chain either as growth or profit opportunity

Highlights of the Digital Transformation in Motion

What started as organisation wide experimentation program is now a full-fledged end to end digital transformation for the business and will redefine how we will be working in the future. It entails:

Picking Up Consumer Signals: Understanding how consumer signals are being converted into business opportunity