For much of the last decade, cost optimisation in consumer goods followed a familiar script. Procurement squeezed vendors. Finance tracked savings. Supply chains absorbed volatility as best they could. That playbook is now exhausted. Inflation has lingered longer than forecast. Input volatility has become structural. Geopolitical shocks have moved upstream risks directly onto balance sheets. What once looked like a sourcing problem has become a value chain problem.
Masha Chandrasekaran has spent her career at precisely this intersection. As Associate Director of Supply Chain Finance at Unilever, she has led large-scale transformation programs spanning post-merger integration, logistics redesign and global value chain investment. Across those efforts, one pattern has become unmistakable. “Cost discipline only works when it is designed into the value chain,” she says. “When volatility is structural, incremental savings stop being durable.”
That shift is not theoretical. According to McKinsey’s 2024 Global Supply Chain survey, more than 90% of global manufacturers experienced significant upstream disruptions over the past two years, with input cost volatility persisting well beyond pre-pandemic norms. In response, leading CPG companies are no longer treating integration and backward investment as exceptional moves. They are becoming a core strategy.
From Procurement Savings to Structural Advantage
Traditional productivity programs tend to optimise at the edges. Negotiating price. Adjusting volumes. Rationalising SKUs. These levers matter, but they rarely survive sustained inflation or demand swings. What differentiates today’s outperformers is their willingness to intervene deeper in the value chain.
Ms. Chandrasekaran has seen this evolution firsthand through Unilever’s global Value Chain Interventions portfolio, a multi-year program spanning more than 60 initiatives across 20 countries. The objective was not short-term savings but structural margin improvement through upstream capability, selective backward integration and long-term supplier partnerships. Ms. Chandrasekaran describes this shift as moving from tactical cost optimisation to architected value chains where capital allocation, operational design and financial governance are embedded in the process before volatility hits.Industry data supports that reframing. Analysis from Bain & Company shows that consumer goods companies pursuing deeper, structurally integrated value-chain strategies are better positioned to protect margins and sustain performance through prolonged inflationary cycles, compared with peers relying on episodic cost programs alone.
Finance plays a key role here. Investment modelling, hurdle discipline and portfolio governance determine whether integration becomes a strategic asset or an overextended bet. “Without financial guardrails, integration creates complexity faster than value,” Ms. Chandrasekaran notes. “The finance lens is what converts ambition into repeatable outcomes.”
Post-Merger Integration as a Value Creation Engine
Nowhere is the importance of financial design more visible than in large-scale mergers. Integration is often discussed in terms of systems and synergies, but its real test lies in whether value is structurally embedded or quietly erodes after go-live.
Ms. Chandrasekaran served as Finance PMO and Supply Chain Finance Lead for the $4.5 billion integration of GSK Consumer Healthcare into Hindustan Unilever, one of India’s largest FMCG mergers. Beyond system harmonisation, her mandate was to model and unlock supply chain synergies across the combined network, spanning manufacturing, logistics and materials.
The scale mattered. The merger increased the size of Unilever’s nutrition business in India by more than 50% and targeted approximately $40million in supply chain synergies alone. Achieving that under pandemic conditions required more than execution discipline. It demanded a clear future-state view of capacity, cost and margin trade-offs. “Integration only creates value when decisions are made with the end-state in mind,” she says. “Otherwise, you inherit complexity without the economics to justify it.”
Research from PwC underscores the risk. Its 2023 M&A integration study found that over half of large integrations fail to deliver targeted synergies within three years, most commonly due to fragmented governance and misaligned financial incentives. Ms. Chandrasekaran’s approach emphasised cross-functional alignment and rigorous financial ownership, ensuring that scale translated into sustained performance rather than temporary uplift. The integration was also recognised with Unilever’s Chairman’s Special Award for each member of the project team.
Logistics Transformation and the Cost-to-Serve Imperative
As consumer markets fragment and service expectations rise, logistics has become another decisive battleground. Faster delivery promises growth, but without financial clarity, it can just as easily dilute margins.
During her tenure leading the finance workstream for Hindustan Unilever’s logistics transformation, Ms. Chandrasekaran helped govern more than $500 million in annual distribution spend across 50 warehouses. Initiatives ranged from next-day delivery models to post-merger depot consolidation. The common thread was a finance-led cost-to-serve architecture that balanced service ambition with structural efficiency.
“Speed without cost transparency is a hidden liability,” Ms. Chandrasekaran observes. “The winners are those who redesign networks with financial visibility embedded, not layered on after the fact.”
The Road Ahead: Finance as the Architect of Resilient Value Chains
Looking forward, the direction is clear. Inflation may moderate, but volatility will not disappear. Regulatory fragmentation, climate pressure and geopolitical realignment are reshaping supply economics for the long term. In that environment, value chain integration is no longer an optional hedge. It is a competitive requirement.
Ms. Chandrasekaran believes finance leaders will increasingly act as architects rather than scorekeepers. “The next phase of advantage will come from where companies choose to invest upstream and how deliberately they govern those investments,” she says. “This is about building resilience that shows up in margins year after year.”
For the CPG industry, the implication is profound. The age of episodic cost programs is giving way to an integrated, finance-led value chain strategy. Those who master that transition will not just weather volatility. They will turn it into a durable source of advantage.
