They say our life is a culmination of everything we have ever experienced. It impacts the interactions we have, the dreams we aspire to, and even the brand of butter we reach for at the supermarket.
Brands know this too. They know who their brand is aimed towards and are dedicated to ensuring their products get to those customers.
Rohit Jindal knows a thing or two about brand management. With a career spanning more than 25 years, he has worked with some of the most well-known household brands like Dove, Sunsilk, Dettol, and Veet.
His career has taken him all across the globe with interludes through India, Southeast Asia, England, and Italy. Through it all, he has carried with him a set of values: insatiable curiosity, unflinching optimism, and a belief in hard work.
How has your upbringing shaped your journey to the present day?
What my parents gave me was a set of orientations. A strong sense that people deserved to be treated with dignity regardless of where they came from, a belief that diligent work can solve even the most difficult problems.
My mother taught me how to find comfort in service, to show up for people who were in need without expecting anything in return.
Saharanpur was a small town with a small school where everybody knew everybody else. I was, let’s say, a good student.
Like many Indian families, mine thought I should get a government job. I started at Maruti Suzuki instead and later moved on to Hindustan Unilever.
Having lived and worked across four continents, was there a particular move or period that changed you?
Bihar. I was an Area Sales Manager (ASM) there from 1999 to 2002, working for Unilever in my twenties.
Bihar was one of India’s most economically challenged states, and most people I knew considered it a hardship posting. I think of those years as the most important of my career, for leadership and for understanding business.
I remember one of my sales officers, close to retirement and due a substantial payment from his provident fund. Just before he retired, he was kidnapped. Petty criminals thought they could hold him for ransom.
I was 24, the ASM for the area, and it became my job to meet with the police every week until we secured his release. (We did.) I learned that honesty and persistence can work even in the worst circumstances.
What Bihar gave me was unfiltered proximity to the consumer and small shopkeepers I sold to. I met the people who bought my products and learned how they thought: their problems, their joys, their aspirations.
I saw firsthand what a good harvest or a bad one did to demand. How marriage season moved it. How government policy and business practice played out in real lives.
A lot of what I understand about brands and business, I learned there.
My most enjoyable experience though, was Italy. It is a country that is creative, beautiful, historic, and full of extremely nice people, who took us as one of their own.
It gave my family a different perspective on how life is not only about running hard; it is also about taking a moment to enjoy it.
You’ve worked on some of the world’s most recognisable brands. What separates a brand that simply sells from one that resonates with people?
Insight. The actual texture of someone’s life.
A brand known and chosen by people holds a privileged position. Like any privilege, it carries an obligation to serve.
The brands that last take that obligation seriously. They see the relationship with the consumer as something to honour.
In an era where CSR often feels like a corporate buzzword, what does genuine corporate impact look like to you?
The test I apply is simple: does it outlast the campaign? Does it make a real difference, even in one person’s life? Does it move things forward?
Any business can make money. A good business can also do good while making money. But talking about good deeds isn’t the same as doing them, and words alone don’t sway people or leave a lasting impact.
There’s a difference between right and expedient in corporate life. The expedient choice feels practical, works today, and looks good in the quarterly report.
It rarely solves the underlying problem and almost never makes a real impact on the community. The right choice aims to make a genuine contribution to people’s lives, starting with the people who work for the company.
How a company treats its own people reveals everything about its beliefs. It won’t satisfy the always-on dopamine machine of social media, but people remember it, and it gets rewarded in the long run.
Overexposure on social media, in fact, defeats the point.
Take Dettol Banega Swachh India (now known as Dettol Banega Swasth India). It reached more than 30 million children and was recognized by the Government of India.
Launched in 2014, it wasn’t just another ad campaign: the project team worked with an NGO to design a hygiene curriculum for government schools. That curriculum is now taught in more than 900,000 schools.
That is lasting impact.
You spent 16 years at Reckitt. Tell us about your time there.
I was fortunate to receive the opportunities Reckitt gave me. I never expected to be sent to Italy. I’d never worked there and couldn’t speak a word of the language.
But that was the pattern at Reckitt: you’d do something well, and they’d ask, “Can you do something better?” Then they’d push you out of your comfort zone. Learn, perform, repeat.
The hardest transition was from brand management to general management. Brand management is a craft you can master.
General management is something else: you’re responsible for outcomes you can’t fully control, delivered by people whose judgment you must trust. The output is a black-and-white P&L, and it affects everyone on the team.
The job requires a custodian mindset. Sixteen years is a long time anywhere, but I stayed because I kept learning.
Reckitt kept putting new problems in front of me, and leaving would have felt like walking out mid-sentence.
Do you have any anecdotes from your time with Reckitt?
Ah, yes. This was in Italy.
Italians are far more stylish than the average person anywhere, and my marketing manager gave me the address of a barber, telling me the guy would “sort me out.”
Nobody there spoke a word of English. I was driving a good car at the time, and Italians love cars, so they figured I was all right.
But what was an Indian doing in Italy? I tried “I work for Reckitt.” Nobody knew Reckitt.
So I said “Director, Durex” instead. The young crowd found it hilarious that Durex had hired an Indian to work on Durex in Italy.
They took a photo with me, printed it, got me to sign it, and put it up on the wall. That’s the power of a brand that matters.
You’ve called Bangkok home for many years now. What is it about the city that made it feel permanent?
Thai people. It’s the quality of human warmth here that got me.
People are kind in a way that isn’t performative. It shows up in small moments: a stranger helping you when you’re lost, a community forming around someone who needs it.
That mutual care is what makes a place feel like home, rather than just another vibrant, cosmopolitan city.
What drives you when you are not in boardrooms and meetings?
Curiosity, above all else. My father taught me that what we don’t know will always outweigh what we know, many times over.
Reading is the primary outlet: poetry, history, science, and new ideas. I read widely and chaotically, buying many books and working through several at once.
Volunteering matters, too. I’m still figuring out where I can contribute most in Bangkok.
My mother spent her later years serving the community in Saharanpur, and I keep coming back to that.
Is there any advice you would give people starting their careers?
We are, at all times, the sum of everything that has happened to us. Our ways of thinking and seeing the world, we carry all of it with us.
I’d ask young people to be more thoughtful before making sharp judgments about others. The world is better off when people think and act differently.
Have your own identity, but make room for people who don’t share it.