GSK’s Big Global Meet Medicine for India’s Soul

As many as 250 top executives of UK-based GSK Consumer Healthcare, led by its President Emma Walmsley, will fly down to Delhi in early February for an annual leadership meet, its first such conclave outside the UK and US, throwing the spotlight on India’s emergence as one of the fastest-growing consumer markets of the world.

In the last few years, several transnational companies ranging from GE to PepsiCo to Nestle have held executive committee or board meetings in India, but this is the first time a foreign firm is bringing such a large contingent of managers to the country. The top layer of executives from 30 countries will attend the leadership conference, internally called the ‘how to win’ meet.

“They are coming here to get a flavour of India’s high growth environment,” said Zubair Ahmed, the head of GSK Consumer Healthcare’s India unit, the maker of Horlicks milk drink and Iodex pain ointment. India accounts for 8% of GSK Consumer Healthcare’s global revenues and is the company’s fastestgrowing market globally, ahead of China.

“Hosting such meets helps the parent company to better understand local operations of a diverse country like India. It elevates the status of the local operations within the organisation,” said PepsiCo India Chairman Manu Anand. PepsiCo had held its global board meeting in Mumbai in late 2009.

India’s economic growth has flagged this year and the slowdown in official decision-making, coupled with the arrests of some high-profile businessmen, has prompted a few business groups to look overseas for investment opportunities. But for global consumer goods companies, grappling with a slowdown in their home markets of Europe and US, the country’s under-penetrated and growing consumer market remains a big draw.

“India is a captive consumer market. Frequency of consumption is increasing, and more importantly, growth is being driven across categories — from rural entry-level products to premium product variants,” says Shirish Pardeshi, executive director and co-head, research, at Anand Rathi Securities.

A handful of foreign companies have restructured their global operations for better alignment with the Indian market. Last year, GSK, elevated its Indian consumer healthcare unit, along with China, to the status of a full-fledged region, reporting directly to its global headquarters and not to its international division.