Asia-Pacific Power List 2021: Sukhleen Aneja, Reckitt

Sukhleen Aneja

Marketing director, R Hygiene, South Asia
Reckitt
India
Member since 2020

Sukhleen Aneja had a blockbuster year in 2020 as RB’s hygiene arm posted a remarkable 16% increase in reported revenue with India among the largest contributors to global growth. It’s perhaps predictable that consumers would rush to stock up on disinfectants and hygiene products last year, and toilet cleaning brand Harpic’s sales in particular grew by nearly 30 million units in 2020. Dettol too was crowned a leader in the soap category despite competitor Unilever dominating this segment in the past. 

Aneja is no stranger to pulling off national-level campaigns (see ‘Five Status Words’) and for Harpic this year, the spotlight goes to the brand’s extension of ‘#MissionPaani’, an initiative to raise awareness about India’s water crisis. It’s a large-scale, far-reaching campaign, and Aneja—with the help of agency partner McCann—roped in India’s most prolific composer, A R Rahman, to craft a water-saving anthem that was launched on World Toilet Day.

You can listen to the anthem here, but suffice to say it’s some of the best use of music in a campaign we’ve seen in a while. With kid performers at the core of a resounding chorus, we’ll be damned if it doesn’t dominate this year’s awards in music categories. 

Disinfectant brand Lizol, meanwhile, went big with its ‘Disinfect to Protect’ campaign, making use of megastars such as Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan to urge consumers to stay home and regularly disinfect surfaces. This is all to say that Aneja’s focus on education and empowerment extending to communities in rural India has made her not just one of the most successful marketers in India, but also one of the most important. 

Aneja can be found on Twitter at @a_sukhleen.