Haleon names Kedar Lele president for India Subcontinent

MUMBAI: Haleon has handed the reins of its India Subcontinent business to Kedar Lele, appointing him president with effect from January 2026. The move signals a sharpened focus on growth, leadership depth and closer alignment with the company’s global ambitions.

Lele will also join the Haleon executive team, bringing India firmly into the heart of the company’s “Win as One” strategy. He succeeds Navneet Saluja, who retired in October 2025 after steering the business through a period of consolidation and transition.

With more than 25 years of experience spanning FMCG, advertising, digital innovation and automotive sectors, Lele arrives with a résumé that blends scale with strategy. He joins Haleon from Castrol India Ltd, where he served as managing director. Prior to that, he spent two decades at Hindustan Unilever Ltd, holding several senior leadership roles, including executive director for sales and customer development in South Asia and chairman and managing director of Unilever Bangladesh.

An alumnus of the Indian School of Business, where he earned an MBA in strategic marketing and operations, Lele also holds a postgraduate diploma in marketing communications from Mica. Beyond corporate leadership, he serves on the board of TVS Automobile Solutions and has previously been vice president of the Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Bangladesh.

As president for the India Subcontinent, Lele will play a central role in driving Haleon’s ambition to reach one billion more consumers globally by 2030. He will also advance the company’s purpose of delivering better everyday health with humanity, with India positioned as a key growth engine in that journey.

Haleon India, formerly GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, operates across oral care, digestive health, pain management, respiratory care and vitamin and mineral supplements. Its portfolio includes household names such as Sensodyne, Eno, Crocin, Iodex, Otrivin, Centrum, Ostocalcium, Parodontax and Polident.

With Lele at the helm, Haleon appears set to blend consumer insight with execution muscle, aiming to make everyday health a little more accessible, and a lot more human.