New Delhi, Sept. 5 -- By the 1920s, the first multinationals had arrived in India. Nestle had been selling condensed milk through agents in Bombay and Calcutta since 1912, Siemens set up its India unit in 1922, and Bata opened its first stores in 1926 before starting production in Konnagar in 1931. Meanwhile, Lever Brothers was already planning a manufacturing presence in 1923.

Yet it took until 1961 for Unilever to appoint its first Indian chairman, Prakash Tandon, nearly two decades after it had first begun inducting Indians into its managerial ranks.

That tells us as much about Unilever as it does about India: there were simply too few Indians trained to run large, modern enterprises. Among those who saw this most clearly, and set ab...