When Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the moon’s south pole in August 2023, India became the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. Behind that successful mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was a raft of companies that had supplied critical components to the space agency. Among them was Godrej Aerospace, a unit of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing, a part of the Mumbai-based Godrej Enterprises Group. Over four decades, Godrej Aerospace has supplied components and systems for hundreds of commercial satellite launches and its mission to Mars in 2014.

“We have been part of most space missions in India since our inception, which is a huge privilege,” says Nyrika Holkar, executive director of Godrej & Boyce and the fourth-generation scion of the more-than century-old conglomerate. Speaking to Forbes Asia in September at the group’s headquarters, set amid lush mangroves in the northeastern Mumbai suburb of Vikhroli, Holkar is seen as the likely successor to her uncle, group chairman and managing director Jamshyd Godrej. The 76-year-old patriarch and Holkar’s mother, Smita Godrej Crishna, 74, have a combined net worth of $11.2 billion, and they appear at No. 20 on the list of India’s 100 richest.

The Godrej name is widely recognized in India, not for its cutting-edge spacecraft parts but rather for a range of everyday consumer products, including locks, furniture and home appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines. For decades, Godrej’s double-door steel closets have been fixtures in middle-class households, used to store everything from clothes and crockery to jewelry and documents. These consumer goods accounted for about 60% of Godrej & Boyce’s fiscal 2025 revenue of $2.3 billion and it’s where Holkar is putting most of her energy these days.

“The challenge is to take a brand that has so much legacy and build a retail, customer-centric, front-facing narrative,” says the 43-year-old, whose responsibilities include brand, legal and M&A functions. The group is investing some $530 million to expand capacity at two of Godrej & Boyce’s eight factory locations, as well as in launching premium products and moving into new geographies and the upgrades. “Our focus is now on R&D, product development and digital tech,” she says. The efforts, which have been unfolding over the past three years, appear to be paying off, with annual revenue nearly doubling and after-tax profit surging fourfold in fiscal 2025 to $67 million from a Covid-induced low in fiscal 2021.

At Interio, a furniture-store chain for both homes and offices, the goal is to roughly triple revenue to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2029 from $410 million in fiscal 2025. The company is shelling out $35 million to add 500 stores, mostly across tier 2 and tier 3 cities, widening its network to 1,500. The expansion reflects a domestic furniture market that’s expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 7.6% over the next five years to $43 billion in 2030, according to Hyderabad-based market advisory outfit Mordor Intelligence, boosted by India’s burgeoning middle class and rapid urbanization.

Interio is eager to woo millennials and Gen Z, adding new lines such as ergonomic chairs for video gamers, aluminum outdoor furniture and fittings for children’s rooms. The signature steel wardrobes, which still make up about half Interio’s sales, are no longer limited to utilitarian grey, but come in a range of finishes and colors such as baked apple and dusty rose. To lure online shoppers, Holkar has grown the furniture chain’s e-commerce division to serve 18,000 zip codes as of March 31, up from 4,000 in 2022. At its brick-and-mortar outlets, she has switched to styled room displays in spaces of up to nearly 1,900 square meters for its so-called flagship experience stores.........

© Forbes