Adi Godrej and Family

The Godrej Group has outlasted every major shift in the Indian economy since 1897, and adapted to most of them.

The group was founded in 1897, and for most of its first century it was known for products built on a premise of domestic self-reliance: safes, locks, soaps and refrigerators manufactured in India for Indian consumers, at a time when most comparable goods were imported. Adi Godrej led the group through the liberalisation era, when those same categories became contested by multinational competitors with larger marketing budgets and global supply chains. The response was to professionalise management, invest in manufacturing quality, and extend the business beyond its original product categories.

Godrej Consumer Products is now a significant emerging markets business with operations across Asia, Africa and Latin America, having acquired several local consumer brands in those geographies rather than exporting Indian products into unfamiliar markets. The family navigated a formal division of the conglomerate in 2024, separating Adi and Nadir Godrej's Godrej Industries from Jamshyd Godrej's Godrej Enterprises Group, a resolution of a decades-long joint structure that had become unwieldy as both sides of the family pursued different strategic directions.