Mrs. Feriel Ali Mehdi took over the reins of the company as the CEO in November 1998. She remained at the position till December 2012. She was the chairman from July,2007 to June, 2023. She has lead the turnaround of ZIL Limited by turning a constantly loss making business into a profitable entity and wiped out all accumulated losses within 3 years of becoming the CEO.
Mrs. Mehdi holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Karachi University. She started her career at Wazir Ali Industries as a Marketing Trainee and rapidly climbed up the corporate ladder to become Brand Manager. She has had exposure on all the levels in Marketing and chiefly looked after the Cooking Oil category of the business.
In 1996, Mrs. Mehdi resigned from Wazir Ali to join ZIL Limited. She took over as the Marketing Manager looking after the entire range of the products and later excelled to the position of Director Marketing. She took over as Managing Director in 1998 and streamlined costs, processes and benchmarked various aspects of the business to make it more state-of-the-art. This resulted in lowering the losses and eventually with her team she turnaround the company by mid-2003. They grew the business from a Rs. 390mn net turnover in 1999 to a Rs. 1.6 bn by 2011. She has recently put into place a new team to invigorate, innovate and eventually grow the business into a more diverse and strong FMCG company.
She attended IMD’s Orchestrating Winning Performance Program (OWP) in 2006 and gained intensive exposure to current thinking on today’s key management issues. Mrs. Mehdi is certified member of Pakistan Institute of Corporate Governance (PICG).
