For decades, companies like Hindustan Unilever (HUL), PepsiCo, and Marico earned the moniker of “CEO Factories” or “talent incubators” — structured, internal grooming grounds that supplied leadership not only to their own ranks but to industries across the board. But the terrain seems to be shifting now, experts opine. A new hiring playbook is in motion, one where legacy companies, long reliant on internal talent pipelines, are increasingly turning outward to fill their top ranks. External dynamics, faster business cycles, and tech disruption have forced even legacy giants to rethink leadership development and embrace external talent.
The grooming culture still exists — but it now co-exists with market-driven hiring imperatives. HUL recently has chosen to bring in a lateral executive from Britannia, signaling a shift from relying solely on internally groomed talent for category expansion — Rajneet Kohli (from Britannia to HUL Foods).
That marks a clear departure from the past. A recent study by Xpheno Executive Search tracking 800 leadership movements in FY2025 reveals that just 2% of all leadership transitions and only 2.5% of CXO moves were internal elevations. This contrasts sharply with previous years, such as FY2023-24, when internal promotions accounted for about 10% of leadership moves. Technology remains the only sector bucking this trend, consistently promoting from within.
For consumer goods behemoths like HUL, known for meticulous leadership development programs and rigorous cultural immersion, this shift is seismic.
“HUL, Marico, and PepsiCo were once temples of internal talent, but as digital disruption and startup ecosystems matured, they began to seek fresh perspectives from outside,” says Siddharth Verma, Head of Executive Search at Xpheno.
The emergence of e-commerce, quick commerce, and D2C-first business models fundamentally disrupted the FMCG value chain. Legacy players lost grip over traditional distribution advantages; while startups began luring away top-tier talent with bigger paychecks, faster promotions, and broader responsibilities, he explains.
As IIT and IIM graduates started opting for high-growth tech startups post-2013, the talent funnel into FMCG began thinning. HUL’s once-coveted “Day 1” hiring status at premier campuses started losing out to tech giants like Google and Microsoft — and increasingly, to promising startups like Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy and the like.
“There’s a clear mid-career leak — HUL-trained professionals are being poached midway by aggressive startups. The pipeline isn’t broken, but it’s eroding,” highlights a headhunter.
Still, external hires aren’t just stopgaps — they’re strategic. When HUL recently brought in Rajneet Kohli from Britannia to lead its foods division, it wasn’t merely about filling a vacancy. Britannia has built robust packaged foods credentials, making Kohli’s appointment a move to inject relevant category experience into HUL’s own play.
“Even companies with solid internal pipelines are hiring externally to rewire their leadership’s thinking,” notes Saif Ahmad Khan, an alumnus of IIM Nagpur and entrepreneur. “It’s not a sign of weakness — it’s a sign of reinvention.”
In some cases, internal politics also complicate the promotion path. When multiple qualified internal candidates are in play, but none can report to one another, an external leader becomes the neutral choice, points out a senior media executive.
Strategic Hires for Strategic Shifts
Parallelly, rather than taking the conventional CMO/CEO track, mid-career FMCG leaders are now also exiting traditional leadership paths for consulting, tech, or D2C startups. In fact, there have been short stints of HUL-trained leaders at start-ups.
For instance, in January 2024, Hemant Bakshi, the seasoned HUL executive who served as the Executive Vice President of Unilever Marketplace and Chairman of Unilever Indonesia, was appointed CEO of Ola Cabs. Despite his extensive experience, Bakshi resigned after just four months in the role. In May 2023, Swiggy appointed Aparna Giridhar as Vice President of Marketing. Giridhar joined from Unilever, where she had an 11-year tenure. However, her stint at Swiggy was relatively short-lived, as she departed within a year and a half.
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Experts tell Storyboard18 that legacy leaders often struggle in the startup ecosystem — some recently hired CMOs or COOs have exited within a year or two, suggesting the FMCG “CEO factory” pedigree doesn’t always translate into new-age leadership success.
So, is the CEO factory model broken? Not quite. Experts suggest it’s undergoing a metamorphosis.
“HUL and peers still build world-class leaders,” Khan explains. “But in today’s dynamic business environment, external hires help accelerate digital transformation and bring in new muscle — in data, analytics, D2C, and contemporary marketing.”
The core consumer product remains unchanged, but the ways of delivering, marketing, and leading the business have fundamentally transformed. In this new order, legacy companies are blending traditional rigour with startup agility. Internal elevation is no longer the default — and maybe that’s not a bad thing.