In an exclusive interaction with Thiruamuthan, Correspondent at Finance Outlook India, Niranjani C, CFO & Whole-time Director – India and South Asia, Kenvue, discusses how consumer healthcare companies are pursuing growth through innovation while maintaining cost efficiency amid evolving market dynamics and financial pressures. She also examines the changing role of finance leadership in driving sustainable business performance.

With around 25 years of experience across Unilever, Nokia, Procter & Gamble and Hershey, she highlights the importance of strategic financial planning, digital transformation and value creation in driving business growth. She also shares insights into capital allocation, AI adoption and future finance leadership capabilities.

What leadership lessons from your career have most influenced how you approach complex business and financial decisions today?

Over the last 25 years, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the biggest names in the consumer industry, namely Unilever, P&G, Nokia, Hershey and now Kenvue. Am truly grateful for these experiences that have shaped my thinking and actions. With respect to business or financial decision-making, 3 lessons that I hold stronger than any other technical training are:

A. Growth Mindset: A Finance leader is responsible for driving growth and managing the bottom line, not just focusing on profitability. That’s when you stop asking only “what does this cost?” and start asking, “what does this make possible?” A CFO who guards only the bottom line can end up protecting a business into decline.

B. Unlocking value: The second comes from driving transformations - when you carve a business out or transform, you discover very quickly which costs truly create value, and which have simply accumulated over time. You also learn to decide with 70% of the information, because waiting for 100% is itself a decision, and usually an expensive one.

C. Credible conversations: Numbers are only as good as the conversation around them. Early on, I believed the best-built model would win the argument. It rarely does. What wins is when sales, supply chain and marketing trust that finance understands their world, so that a “no” from finance is heard as a considered judgment and a “yes” carries conviction. Today, before I jump into any complex decision, I ask one question: what needs to be true for this to work, and how quickly would we know if it isn’t?

How do you balance long-term strategic priorities with the financial pressures and decisions that demand immediate attention?

I treat it as a portfolio question rather than a tug of war. The bill for short-term irrational choices comes two or three years later, and rebuilding takes more time.

So, discipline must be structural, not heroic. Separate “run” spend from “build” spend, and protect the build budget – core brand investment, innovation and capability- so that it is debated as an investment, not used as a lever to hit a number. When short-term pressure comes, and it always does, look first at productivity: procurement opportunities, mix, trade-spend effectiveness, working capital and complexity. Growth drivers should be the last resort, not the first. Also, when teams see savings coming back as investment, cost discipline stops being a threat and becomes a habit.

How is the CFO's role evolving as consumer healthcare companies invest in brands, innovation, digital capabilities and new routes to market?

The CFO’s role is moving from steward of the numbers to co-architect of the portfolio. Three shifts stand out:

Capital allocation: This has become far more granular. A decade ago, the question was largely how much to spend on a brand. Today it is which brand, in which channel, for which consumer, at what return and over what horizon. The CFO sits at the center of those trade-offs across brands, innovation, digital and route-to-market investments.

RTM Management: Routes to market have multiplied, and each has different economics. The neighborhood kirana, chemist, modern trade, e-commerce, quick commerce and direct-to-consumer all carry different margin structures, working-capital needs, data access and costs to serve. Finance must build a true channel P&L, because blended averages hide where value is being created and where it is leaking.

Agile innovation: To keep pace with the evolving consumer, innovations need to be planned proactively with a longer horizon in mind and as a portfolio of options with clear stage-gates backed with process rhythm. Finance plays a key role in prioritizing and ensuring sufficiency of investments to fuel the future in a disciplined, sustainable manner.

How can finance teams use AI, automation and real-time analytics to improve forecasting and business decision-making?

AI will not replace financial judgment, but it will change where finance spends its time. The first and least glamorous step is the data foundation. Without clean master data and a single view of primary, secondary and online sales, even the best model produces confident nonsense. Automating the close, reconciliations and routine reporting frees significant capacity, which can be redeployed into analysis and business partnering. Forecasting is where the gains are most visible – resulting in fewer stock-outs, lower write-offs and better-timed trade spends. Real-time analytics also change the rhythm of decision-making - scenario planning that once took a fortnight can now be done in an afternoon, so leadership discussions can focus on choices rather than on reconciling numbers.

Which capabilities do you believe future finance leaders need to develop to navigate increasingly complex consumer healthcare businesses?

My top 5 picks would be as follows:

Commercial fluency comes first. Future finance leaders must understand consumers, shoppers, channels and brands as well as they understand balance sheets. The most effective CFOs I know can hold their own in a brand review or a distributor negotiation.

Second, data and AI literacy. Not every finance leader needs to build models, but everyone must know what to ask of them, how to spot bias and when to overrule them.

Third, anticipating risks and understanding how they can impact financial performance. In consumer health, claims substantiation, quality systems, pharmacovigilance and price regulation all have direct financial consequences. Geopolitical volatility can impact your business cycles and performance at various levels.

Fourth, transformation and transaction capability - Carve-outs, acquisitions, integrations and operating-model changes are now recurring features of the industry. Leading finance through them, running the business while redesigning it, sets leaders apart.

Fifth, and perhaps most important, influence and judgment. Finance leaders increasingly lead through others - translating complexity into clear choices, building trust across functions and having the courage to say what the numbers mean, even when unwelcome.