Women to Watch 2024: Lulu Raghavan, Landor

Lulu Raghavan

President, APAC
Landor
India

In a career spanning 23 years, Lulu Raghavan has achieved the impressive feat of rising through the ranks from junior manager to president of APAC. Joining branding consultancy Landor as a naming manager in 2001, Raghavan has since taken on roles in strategy, client services, business development and leadership at the San Francisco, New York, London and Mumbai offices of Landor. In fact, she set-up Landor in Mumbai in 2008 and grew it to be India’s largest branding and design agency and the recipient of numerous awards. 

Today, Raghavan is president of APAC for Landor, and has the honour of being the first female and the first person of Indian origin in this role. In the past year alone, Raghavan has led the India operations to double-digit growth in revenue and profit. Landor was among the top-three highest-performing companies at WPP India in 2023. In addition, she brought the market leaders of five APAC markets—India, China, Japan, Australia and Southeast Asia—much closer together in a ‘One APAC’ model to help foster collaboration and ignite growth across the region. This has ultimately resulted in driving new business across APAC totalling over $15 million in wins in the last year.

As president of Landor APAC, Raghavan has focused on building a strong regional leadership team and is fostering closer connections in the pursuit of growth. She is a people-centric leader who is empathetic and encouraging of employees while having high performance expectations. The results speak for themselves as employee engagement scores of 84% across APAC have surpassed the global average of 74%.

Her work in driving diversity and inclusion across the APAC region is reflected in the 2023 employee engagement survey at Landor, where 87% of respondents agreed that their manager creates an inclusive environment and 82% strongly agreeing that they can be their authentic self at work. 

A committed DEI advocate, Raghavan is a founding member of the Building To Belong community at Landor APAC which drives DEI through panel discussions and critical recommendations on company actions. She has also conducted several masterclasses on personal branding for the Supercouncil at WPP Stella India, a mentorship programme for over 150 high-potential women at WPP India, of which she is also a founding member. 

In 2023, Raghavan was the recipient of two Women Leading Change Awards by Campaign India, for 'Mentor of the Year' and 'Women Leading Change of the Year'. In addition, Landor India was awarded Campaign India’s Agency of the Year 2023 and certified as a Great Place to Work and Best Workplace for Women.

Raghavan has served on numerous award juries including the Cannes Lions Design Jury in 2018. She had her own TV show Beyond Logo On Bloomberg UTV and has recently published her first book with Bloomsbury titled Go Further, Faster: Shaping a life that matters.