Manoj Gadgil, a marketing and business leader who spent more than two decades at Johnson & Johnson and its consumer health spin-off Kenvue, has taken over as Chief Executive Officer of Vini Cosmetics Private Limited, according to an announcement he shared on LinkedIn.
Vini Cosmetics is a personal care company behind iconic brands including Fogg deodrant brand, which also owns lables such as Ossum and Glum Up. The KKR-backed company was founded by Darshan and Dipam Patel.
A career built at J&J
Gadgil’s association with Johnson & Johnson began in 1999, when he joined as a Senior Product Manager after completing his PGDM in Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Early on, he worked on brands such as Band-Aid and Savlon, along with initiatives for Johnson’s Baby.
Over the next 24 years, he moved through sales, customer marketing and brand management roles across India and Singapore. In India, he served as Area Sales Manager for Delhi Metro and Regional Sales Manager for the East. He then set up the company’s national customer marketing group, covering shopper marketing, trade promotions and demand management.
As Marketing Manager from 2010, he held full P&L responsibility for the Neutrogena and Clean & Clear brands. He later moved to Singapore, where he rose from Senior Marketing Manager on the Johnson’s brand to Marketing Director for Femcare, Asia Pacific, shaping global brand strategy and the regional innovation pipeline. In 2018 he became Senior Director, leading a regional marketing operations transformation that included a new agency model, improved media effectiveness and stronger digital capabilities.
Returning to India in 2019, Gadgil became Vice President Marketing, and from 2022 also served as Business Unit Head. He continued in that dual role at Kenvue, the consumer health company separated from Johnson & Johnson, through March 2026.
An engineer-turned-marketer
Gadgil began his career as an engineer. After earning a B.E. in Polymer Engineering from Pune University, where he attended the Maharashtra Institute of Technology, he worked from 1995 to 1996 as an Assistant Manager at Reliance Industries’ Hazira complex, handling pre-commissioning activities at its polypropylene plant. He then pursued his management degree at IIM Calcutta.
Move to Vini Cosmetics
His appointment at Vini Cosmetics marks his first CEO role, following a career spent largely in marketing leadership and business unit management at multinational consumer companies.
The company did not immediately provide further details on its plans under his leadership.
