Dev Bajpai has more than three decades of working experience in the areas of legal, corporate affairs, governance & tax. He has worked in multiple industries like FMCG, Automobiles, Private Equity & Hospitality. Over the years, Mr. Bajpai has built a reputation of being a business-friendly lawyer with high focus on governance and doing the right thing & doing it right. Mr. Bajpai had a lead role to play in the recent merger of GSK Consumer Health Limited into HUL, the biggest merger of a listed FMCG company into another listed FMCG company in recent times.

At Unilever, Mr. Bajpai is credited to have put in place a Legal Strategy with the focus on business integration. The strategy encompasses areas of work that facilitate the growth of Unilever businesses including proactively addressing legislative changes, seeking a level playing field within the FMCG Industry on claims, advertising, regulatory compliance etc. making the Legal Department go digital and simplifying processes to enable the lawyers to spend more time on value-added jobs, combating unfair competition, and building capability within the South Asia and larger teams that he is responsible for. The strategy has yielded good results and left the team with unfinished agenda to deal with indicating that the areas of work remain relevant for the business, add value to the lawyers by giving them quality exposure and an opportunity to add to their capability.

The Legal team under Mr. Bajpai made meaningful contribution during the Pandemic and was instrumental in ensuring that the daily needs items of Unilever’s portfolio reached millions of consumers by working closely with the Central and State Administration. The Legal team also saw an opportunity in their agenda of “hunting for growth” and introduced a new channel for sale of Unilever portfolio through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) which has now become a separate channel for making sales for HUL, thereby, creating long-term business value.

As part of his NAMETRUB role, Mr. Bajpai has been instrumental in advocating lifting of sanctions by the US Administration on Iran based FMCG Companies at the time of the Pandemic in 2020 on the ground that daily needs products like soaps, sanitisers, shampoos & household cleaning products etc. were most required & served as the first line of defence during the fatal wave one of the Pandemic. These advocacy efforts bore fruit. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) US Administration, did remove these sanctions on manufacturing companies saving the jobs of hundreds of people and ensured continuity of supplies of essential items. Mr. Bajpai has been working closely with Trade Associations and has represented Industry before Parliamentary Committees dealing with important regulations. Mr. Bajpai is the Chair of the FMCG Committee of the European Business Group. He is the Chairman of Unilever Nepal Limited, a listed subsidiary of HUL.

"Always follow the path of the harder right than the easier wrong"

"Doing the right thing & doing it right"