Mr. Nihal Kaviratne CBE

Kaviratne joined Unilever in India as a management trainee in 1966 and held roles including head of marketing research and economics and general manager of the export division, later serving in senior executive positions in Latin America, Europe and Asia. He became chairman and chief executive of PT Unilever Indonesia in November 1998, remaining until 2003, and in January 2004 moved to the Unilever Asia Business Group in Singapore as senior vice-president for development and environmental affairs, taking on the chairmanship of Unilever's home and oral care business in Asia in January 2005.

After leaving executive life he served as an independent non-executive chairman or director of a number of companies, among them DBS Group and DBS Bank Singapore, the DBS Foundation, StarHub, Olam International, GSK Pharma India, Wildlife Reserves Singapore, Fullerton India, Titan Industries and SATS, and as chairman of TVS Motor Company Indonesia, ICI/AkzoNobel India and Caraway Singapore. He was a founding member of the board of governors of President University in Indonesia.

He sits on the advisory boards of the Indian Pediatric Hematology Oncology Group and the Indian Hematology Cancer Consortium, and is a senior adviser to Bain & Company in Asia and a member of McKinsey's Global Corporate Resilience Advisory Council.

After returning to Mumbai, Kaviratne visited a cancer aid organisation and, leaving Tata Memorial Hospital, saw families of patients sleeping on the pavements outside. He and his wife Shyama, who had long worked with children, decided to provide clean, safe accommodation for children undergoing cancer treatment and their parents.

The first centre opened in 2006 in Mumbai with eight family units, each housing a child patient and a parent, and was funded by the couple themselves with help from family and friends. The model was replicated across the country: the organisation now runs dozens of centres in cities including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Delhi, Jaipur, Vellore, Chennai, Varanasi, Visakhapatnam, Muzaffarpur, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, working alongside hospitals such as Tata Memorial Hospital, AIIMS New Delhi and Tata Medical Centre Kolkata. All services are provided free of charge.

Kaviratne was named in 2002 by BusinessWeek as one of 25 leaders at the forefront of change in its Stars of Asia listing. He was cited in the Queen's 2004 New Year Honours List and appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to United Kingdom business interests and sustainable development in Indonesia. He was recognised for driving business excellence at the World Business Conclave in Hong Kong in 2016.[2][3][4]