Abhay Parnerkar, CEO, Godrej Foods Limited and Mallika Mutreja, Chief Human Resources Officer, Godrej Agrovet Limited talk about the insights, and challenges of making workplace inclusion an everyday reality.

How can DEI values be implemented in functions like sales, which has traditionally been male-dominated, especially in the agri-input sector? How can inclusive hiring positively reshape workplace culture? DEI Lab members Gayatri Shanbhag and Rajeev Kushwah spoke to Abhay Parnerkar and Mallika Mutreja on these questions, with a specific focus on advancing women’s representation at Godrej Foods Limited. In this conversation, they explore goals, inspirations, and challenges behind DEI thinking – and how leadership is helping move the needle on gender equity in the workplace. 

(Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.)

Q: What has influenced your thinking around DEI and motivated you to get involved in being an advocate for change?   

Mallika: Previously, I worked in the FMCG sector where women representation ranges 30-50% across functions. And then I came to an industry where there was 5-6% representation, so I could feel the difference in the work culture. My insight was that increasing representation not only means we are doing the right thing, it also expands how we think within the organisation in relation to business and otherwise. 

I believe that our work cultures need to be empathetic. Whether or not we reach equal representation among employees across gender, any kind of incline in numbers of women employees or other gender identities alters the cultural fabric at work to be more inclusive. So I believe increasing representation in some ways organically leads us to thinking about building inclusive work cultures and practices.   

Abhay: Just like Mallika, before GFL, I extensively worked in the consumer goods industry for many years and have worked in offices with diverse representation across three continents. My experience of working in an environment with people from different socio-cultural backgrounds in all these offices, particularly in Africa, had a phenomenal impact on my beliefs and learnings connected to diversity and inclusion.  

Even in Europe, the team I was working with was composed of 70% women employees and we won the best market for Coca-Cola among 200 other nominees, which for me, symbolises how diversity and inclusion will continue to boost, and not only sustain a business.  

Having been at GFL for four and a half years now, I note that the majority of this industry’s consumers are women. In the last one year at GFL, we have been actively hiring more women to our workforce. We believe that the organisation’s workforce should represent the consumers we are catering to, and that's what we’ve been working on over the last few months.  

Q: How far along the DEI journey do you feel GLF has come? 

Abhay: Although we have been thinking about what DEI means to us for a few years now, it is only a year ago that our synthesis of ideas led us towards imagining and building a programme to bring more women into our salesforce.  

Most of our businesses are in urban areas, especially in metro cities. We wanted to launch the programme in this context so that when we start, we can pause infrastructural and logistical support that needs to be concerned when launching in rural or not well-connected places. Hence, sales became a function that we wanted to focus on through this programme as we thought it would be a conducive environment for women employees to thrive in.  

We started off by collaborating with a few educational institutions for management courses so that we could hire women immediately after their postgraduate studies. We offered them thorough training in sales as well so that they can ease into the role.  

Mallika: In terms of increasing women representation, each year we were making progress by 1%. We grew from 6% to 8% over FY 2022 to FY 2024. But last year we recorded an increase from 8% to 12% which meant a net addition of more than 140 women in our workforce. This is a significant change and a step in the direction to be an inclusive organisation. 

When you have 94% representation of employees who are men, then it is quite a challenge to change that and bring more women in. I’m grateful for the GFL team because they have been very steadfast in their commitment to not only hire more women but also make the workplace conducive for women to work and thrive in. They have challenged a lot of socio-cultural myths and barriers that keep women away from roles that are traditionally predominantly held by men. And GFL has set an example that it is not only possible to hire women in these roles, but they also reiterated how women employees can be so vital towards a business’s growth and success through their subjective perspectives and ideas.  

In terms of the targets for the current financial year, GFL’s target was to increase women representation from 7% to 13% but they are ending closer to 16% women representation which is the biggest increase I have seen in any business. This was mainly because we did not see increasing women representation as a target but for us it was really about doing the right thing.  

This has convinced all businesses at GAVL that if they even start by hiring 10-20 women, we are hiring more than 100 women across the value chain in the organisation.  

A snippet from Godrej Foods Limited's film that celebrates the people who power India’s food supply chain. You can click here (or on the photo above) to watch the film ‘Godrej Foods - Empowering Women in India's Food Journey.’

Q: What success/outcomes has GFL realised from diversity initiatives or best practices? 

Mallika: There is a lot of talk around the increase in the educated workforce that is not fully employable. We decided to address that gap and started providing sales training to women in colleges during their studies itself instead of after graduating. We felt this would not only benefit these women but also it would benefit us and any other company that they join. And so, we tied up with a few educational institutions to make this happen. 

Another key learning for us was that our aim must not be limited to women in college but also women returning from a career break, women veterans, and homemakers as well. 

Additionally, we also learnt that this work of increasing representation is about equity and not equality. We wanted to be mindful that we don’t in any way suggest that our women employees are better than the men working with us or vice versa. Performance standards for all are common and their work is measured using the same metrics irrespective of gender. Because if we are not mindful of this, then we might lose the business case for increasing representation of women. 

We also noted that women were not progressing to leadership roles even when their performance was good. We do have common leadership development programmes for all our employees. But we came to acknowledge that sometimes the socialisation of women to undermine their capabilities and hold themselves back continues to stay with them, even when they are excellent in their work. So, we decided to produce leadership development programmes just for women, where they can express their inhibitions and develop skills to speak up in spaces dominated by men.  

Abhay: To me a key was learning that it is important to start this work of making a change and get the wheel moving. There is always so much planning involved about how to start; but it is only when we start that we realise how to move forward, and explore and make real the possibilities of hiring more women and making the work environment conducive.  

In this process of integrating more women in the workforce, it was also important that their co-workers, who are mostly men, are allies and will not turn against them. And we did not want to make this limited to HR protocol, although our HR teams have been very supportive in making our workplaces conducive for our women employees. So, it was important that we ensured that all the employees in the workplace are respectful towards each other and are receptive towards guiding new women employees.  

Mallika: Adding to Abhay’s last point, it is important that the women joining us have role models. What GFL has done is increase representation at all levels within the organisation, which is commendable and necessary.  

Q: What are some of the major concerns that came up while working with women that GFL would like to focus on? 

Mallika: Doing sales is not easy. There are good days and bad. But our women employees who came through our training programmes have affirmed that everything they learned during our training equips them with the confidence to do their work in sales everyday. Additionally, coming through our training programme also meant that the participants were able to network with each other and build community amongst themselves. They always have their groups to fall back on whenever they encounter any challenges connected to their work in sales. 

I am holding off on praising the feedback too much, because we can decipher concrete insights only after a year. But that is not to say we haven’t had success stories. We highlight these not only to motivate our employees, but also to set an example for ourselves, on how we can do better, and to set an example for the food and agri industry at large, on how we can collectively make our field conducive for women to work and flourish in.  

Something we heard a lot from the women employees we spoke to was that if they have a good line manager, they don’t need anything more. Especially in the first few years of your career, it really matters that you have a responsible and respectful manager. Keeping that in mind, we have ensured that all our line managers are allies to the women in the team.  

Abhay: What is significant to me here is that the feedback we have received so far has not been gender specific, but has been specific to the role of sales itself. Everybody wants a good line manager that supports them in growing in their career and doing better in their roles. I think that is quite a testament to the success of our training and hiring programme for women, and it means that there is much scope for this programme to scale up.  

Q: What is the company’s position on extending current DEI frameworks towards making the workplace affirming for people with disabilities and people from LGBTQIA+ communities? 

Mallika: Our current focus is on women. However, we have been in communication with agencies to explore job opportunities for people with disabilities. That also means we have to simultaneously build on our infrastructure to support their needs in the workplace.  

We also have some people from LGBTQIA+ communities working with us, but the representation is not at scale as yet.  

This interview was conducted by Gayatri Shanbhag and Rajeev Anand Kushwah from the DEI Lab. Gayatri is a maker, writer, educator, and researcher interested in anti-colonial queer-feminist design studies and pedagogy. Rajeev is a researcher-writer interested in queer experiences, the feminist ethics of care, and masculinities.