Harsh Mariwala and Family

Harsh Mariwala took unbranded coconut oil and edible oil and turned them into Parachute and Saffola. The products did not change. The business did.

Mariwala separated the consumer products business from his family's traditional trading operations in 1990 to create Marico, with the view that building branded, packaged versions of commodity goods was a fundamentally different business from trading in them and needed to be run separately. The flagship products were already sold under brand names, but Mariwala invested in packaging, consumer insight and distribution to convert them from products into brands that commanded loyalty and price premium rather than competing purely on price.

Marico's products are now sold in over 25 countries, with a particularly strong presence across South and Southeast Asia and Africa. The company has since extended into male grooming, premium hair care and nutrition products, using the distribution network built around the original brands as the entry point into adjacent categories. Mariwala has also been publicly consistent about the operating philosophy behind Marico, including a willingness to discuss mistakes that is less common among Indian industrialists of his generation.