Stories of Indian business leaders: the hard call they made, what it cost, and the lesson for anyone running a business. New stories are added regularly. Part of Boardroom Moves.
October 2026
In 2022 investors gave Blinkit zero value. Albinder Dhindsa stayed after the sale, scaled the 10-minute model, and in 2026 Blinkit made a ₹102 crore quarterly profit and he became Eternal's CEO.
October 2026
In FY21 PVR's revenue fell 92% to ₹280 crore and it lost ₹748 crore. Ajay Bijli cut fixed costs 63%, raised ₹1,600 crore and merged with INOX. In FY26 PVR INOX sold 150 million tickets.
October 2026
In FY14 Saregama's music revenue fell 18.5% and its MD quit. Vikram Mehra turned its old catalogue into Carvaan and streaming income, and in FY26 the music business brought in ₹684 crore.
October 2026
In March 2020 Tata Motors sold 5,676 cars in India. Shailesh Chandra took charge that April, bet on EVs and the Punch, and in FY26 Tata sold 6,31,387 cars, nearly five times its FY20 volume.
October 2026
Marico's CEO decided a large company was not built to start digital brands, so he bought Beardo, Just Herbs and Plix and left the founders alone. They now run above ₹1,100 crore a year.
October 2026
In July 2023 Sanjiv Puri moved ITC's hotels into a separate company. The shares fell, investors wanted more, and he kept 40%. In FY26 ITC earned ₹20,286 crore and ITC Hotels paid its first dividend.
October 2026
In 2009 Rajiv Bajaj took India's most famous scooter maker out of scooters. A decade later the Chetak name came back as an electric scooter, and by June 2026 it had sold 8 lakh units.
October 2026
Amul crossed ₹1 lakh crore in brand turnover in FY26 and will never list. Jayen Mehta took it to America on farmer-owned milk from Michigan, not on capital markets.
October 2026
Maruti Suzuki's market share fell to a 13-year low of 39.26% in FY26, yet it sold a record 24.22 lakh vehicles. Chairman R C Bhargava, 91, told analysts not to harp on market share.
October 2026
On his 115th day as Kotak Mahindra Bank's CEO, the RBI barred it from onboarding customers online. Ashok Vaswani fixed the problem he inherited, and the curbs were lifted on day 409.
September 2026
Nykaa listed 79% above its issue price, then fell out of India's top 100 companies. Falguni Nayar kept growing it. Profit rose from ₹21 crore in FY23 to ₹204 crore in FY26.
September 2026
Mamaearth's parent Honasa fell 40% to ₹223 after its first loss as a listed company. Varun Alagh bought shares twice, ₹50 crore the second time. By September 2026 it was near ₹480.
September 2026
BlueStone listed below its ₹517 issue price after a ₹219 crore loss. With no pivot, Gaurav Singh Kushwaha took FY26 to a ₹26 crore profit on ₹2,441 crore revenue.
September 2026
Taj Hotels had lost money for seven straight years when Puneet Chhatwal took over. He raised ₹4,000 crore mid-pandemic and took IHCL's profit past ₹2,000 crore.
September 2026
When free mobile data crashed Airtel's profit 76.5% in a year, Gopal Vittal refused to chase every subscriber. He let 40 million low-spenders go and built the network for those who would pay more instead.
September 2026
M P Ahammed traded coconut and spices for 12 years, opened one jewellery shop in Kozhikode in 1993, then sold debentures in the Gulf to grow it to 445 stores.
September 2026
Mahindra's profit fell 98% in the year to March 2020. The first non-family group CEO in 75 years hit the group's five-year RoE target in eighteen months, and took second place in Indian cars from Hyundai.
September 2026
In 2011, Noel Tata was passed over for chairman of Tata Sons. He built Zudio into 963 of Trent's 1,286 stores and in 2024 became chairman of Tata Trusts.
September 2026
In 2022 Domino's India was losing pull as costs rose. Sameer Khetarpal held prices flat, backed Domino's own delivery fleet, and profit jumped 190% by the September 2025 quarter, helped by a one-time gain.
September 2026
Sudhir Jatia resigned from VIP Industries in 2010 and in 2011 bought 56.55% of Safari Industries for ₹29 crore. Sales have since grown from ₹70 crore to over ₹2,047 crore, and market share from 2% to 23%.
September 2026
In November 2020, malls were half empty and Shoppers Stop was heading for a 44% fall in revenue. Venu Nair took the top job anyway, kept a ₹450 crore cost-savings drive on track, and turned the company net-cash within a year.
August 2026
In October 2003, worms found in Dairy Milk bars put Cadbury India on the TV news weeks before Diwali, and festival-season sales fell 30 percent. Managing Director Bharat Puri chose to rebuild trust rather than only defend the factories, and sales recovered within six months.
August 2026
In 1949, a 27-year-old engineer got off a train at Anand counting the days until his government bond ended. A farmer asked him to stay. Verghese Kurien spent the next fifty years building Amul into a co-operative now owned by 3.6 million farmers, crossing ₹1 lakh crore in turnover in 2025-26.
August 2026
In 2000, a 26-year-old took charge of a motorcycle business his own family was preparing to shut down. He fixed the machine before touching the market, then made the company smaller on purpose. Royal Enfield sold over 10 lakh motorcycles in FY25.
August 2026
Tanishq spent its early years guessing wrong about the Indian gold buyer. C K Venkataraman, who ran the jewellery division from 2005 to 2019 and later became Titan's managing director, helped turn that lesson into India's leading organised jewellery business: over ₹46,000 crore in FY25.
August 2026
In 1993, Ramesh Chauhan sold India's No. 1 cola brand to Coca-Cola, then rebuilt his fortune on bottled water nobody wanted to pay for. The boardroom lesson in category creation.
August 2026
Sunil D'Souza said no to leading Tata's consumer business because it lacked direction. That was exactly why Chandrasekaran wanted him. The boardroom lesson in taking the unclear brief.
July 2026
38,000 tonnes of Maggi were destroyed. Suresh Narayanan took the MD job that same year and rebuilt Nestle India to ₹20,000 crore. How he ran the crisis.
July 2026
Shailesh Jejurikar joined P&G in 1989 straight out of IIM Lucknow and never left. On January 1, 2026 he became the first Indian-origin CEO in the company's 187-year history.
July 2026
Sudhir Sitapati led HUL's Horlicks merger, then left its management committee to run Godrej Consumer. What nearly five years at a smaller, messier company reveal about real leadership.
July 2026
Sanjiv Mehta grew HUL's value more than 4x, closed the GSK merger, and doubled women in leadership. What Bhopal taught him about running a boardroom.
July 2026
In 1999, Hindustan Lever tried to kill Parachute outright. Marico's founder said no to a buyout and fought on four fronts instead. What the boardroom decision to fight, not sell, actually took.
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