(NEELAM

AHIRE)

CSR
ANALYSIS OF FACTORS ADOPTED BY HUL IN ESTABLISHING
ITSELF AS SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE CORPORATE

CHAPTER-1
INTRODUCTION:
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is India's largest Fast Moving Consumer
Goods Company with a heritage of over 80 years in India. On any given day, nine
out of ten Indian households use our products to feel good, look good and get more
out of life – giving us a unique opportunity to build a brighter future.

HUL is the market leader in Indian consumer products with presence in over 20
consumer categories such as soaps, tea, detergents and shampoos amongst others
with over 700 million Indian consumers using its products. Sixteen of HUL's
brands featured in the ACNielsen Brand Equity list of 100 Most Trusted Brands
Annual Survey (2014), carried out by Brand Equity.

HUL’s product portfolio includes leading household brands such as Lux, Lifebuoy,
Surf excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair and Lovely, Pond’s, Vaseline, Lakme, Knorr, Kissan,
Kwality Wall’s and Pureit. HUL is a subsidiary of Unilever, one of the world’s
leading supplier’s of Food, Home Care, Personal Care and Refreshment products
with sales in over 190 countries and an annual sales turnover of 52.7 billion in
2016.

OBJECTIVE

1. To meet the everyday needs of people everywhere.

2. To study the competition held in the market for Hindustan Lever Ltd.
  
3. To know about the customers perception while purchasing the products.
  
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A research methodology is the arrangement of condition for collection and analysis

of data in a manner that to, combine relevance to research purpose with economy
in procedure.

Research Design

Research Design is conceptual structure within which research is conducted. It

constitutes the blue print of collection, measurement and analysis of data. Research
design is needed because it facilitates the smooth sailing of various research
operations, thereby making research as efficient as possible yielding maximum
information with minimum time, effort and money.

Exploratory research

The idea gets deeper insight into competition in the market and to get buying
behaviour of consumers. In order to address above-mentioned objectives

(I) Study of secondary sources was carried out from internet, books, and
Magazines

(II) Structured questionnaire was designed to seek consumer responses.

Descriptive research

The data is analysed, which was collected.

SCOPE:

In this study all the products of the Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) are
considered.

Factors which have been adopted by HUL and how it will be helpful for their
brand equity it also shown.

LIMITATIONS:

1. It is a hard fact that each study suffer from some limitations. One of the
limitations of the study is, as the information is collected from there tailers, the
monthly sales figure given by them is based entirely on their own judgment. So a
few of them might have given the wrong figures related to their monthly sales.
Another limitation was that some of there tailers were busy and could not give
appropriate information. And also very few retailers did not want to share any
information.

2. Another limitation of the study was the customers who were personally
interviewed did not want to share the actual data as few of them were giving fake
data.

3. The Sales Executive of the company was always on tour so it is not possible to
conduct the personal interview with them. So all the information related to the
company is collected by the telephonic interview.
 CHAPTER-2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE:
The Marketing Mastermind (2003), Hindustan Lever rural marketing Initiatives by
"A Mukund" Marketing Mastermind has given the perspectives in which HLL has
approached towards rural markets.

The Economic Times (2003), "The rural market likes it strong" the strength of rural
markets for Indian companies. Financial express, June 19, 2000 has published the
strategy about FMCG majors, HLL, Marico Industries, Colgate Palmolive have
formula had for rural markets

Martin and Morich (2011) stated that theories of consumer behaviour theorized
that consumers always made deliberate decisions regarding the things they
purchased. The authors stated that the choices of a consumer were the result of
clear needs and helped in the determination of the product of choice. The authors
also mentioned that human behaviour either began as an unplanned progression or
occurred totally outside of deliberate attentiveness. No conscious goal search had
an impact on the attitudes, goals and thoughts of the consumers without their
attentive minds. In the light of the evidence that unconscious behaviour occurred
initially, this article suggested a new model of comprehending consumer
behaviour. This model incorporated both deliberate and unintentional
psychological developments to signify how consumers take decisions regarding
brand purchase in their everyday lives.

Deliya (2012) attempted to understand consumer behaviour towards FMCG

products. He observed that in the modern markets, which were highly competitive,
good packaging acquired great significance. It provided a consumer with relevant
information and induced him to take positive buying decisions. The author
emphasized that a well-designed pack was powerful than advertising as it had a
direct impact on the mental perception of the consumers.

Jain. A, ( 2012)*3- studied that, the brand awareness in rural areas particularly in
respect of beauty care and health care products is showing an increasing tendency.
Most of the people both from illiterate & literate groups prefer branded products
with the belief that quality is assured as the manufacturers are reputed companies.
For Ex: Colgate Tooth Paste, Head & Shoulder shampoo. People are not worried
about the price of the product.
Siras M. (2012)*4- found that in his study that, rural marketing should not give the
impression that rural markets have not been exploited at all. Its purpose is only to
highlight the growing importance of rural markets in the fast changing economic
situation. Already, substantial penetration has been made by the producers of most
consumer goods.

Venukumar G., (2012)*2- in his study conclude that, it is certain that F.M.C.G.
companies will have to really gain inroads in the rural markets in order to achieve
double digit growth targets in future. There is huge potential and definitely there is
lot of money in rural India. The companies entering rural market must do so, for
strategic reasons and not for tactical gains as rural consumer is still a closed book
and it is only through unwavering commitment that the companies can make a dent
in the market.

Sabura F. M.,et al (2012)*5 has drawn conclusion from the retailer’s point of view
is that, the distribution system of Britannia is not effective in Soundara
pandiyapuram & Solaseri. They get the product from wholesale agencies. Britannia
can do their best to the retailers, if they adopt direct distributions. Thus Britannia
can increase their market share through sales promotion activities, intensive
distribution and attractive schemes to retailers. More concentration should be given
to the supply chain of the bakery, pan shop and medical shop and marketing mix of
the grocery shops, as the retailers felt less satisfied with the above area.

Dr.Singh J., and Saikh (2012)*6 has studied that, the marketers must understand
the role of family in influencing the buying of consumer durables more particularly
in the rural areas. The marketers must design their advertising messages as well as
visuals in such a way that these penetrate well into the minds of the family
members. Only then they can have positive endorsements of their products in a
highly competitive environment. Marketers must take significant steps in crafting
and presenting credible and persuasive advertisements.

Rahman M., et al (2012)*7 found in his study that ,in India the market share of hair
care segment contributes a considerable amount i.e. 9% of F.M.C.G. sector which
is continuously increasing from 6230.8 crores of rupees to 8417.79 crores of
rupees in the commercial years of 2008-09 to 2010-11. The shampoo market is
dominated by Hindustan Unilever Ltd. with a market share of 46% followed by
Procter and Gamble with 24%. The top shampoo brands Sunsilk, Clinic Plus,
Pantene and Head & Shoulders which are placed in the ‘Stars’ cell of BCG matrix
of shampoo brands of India.

Dey. S., et al(2012)*8 study that, some of the retailers tried to understand and fulfil
the requirement of the rural customers but as such no model is fool proof and
hence not living up to the expectations of the customers. This study is an attempt to
understand the needs of the rural India and available options to fulfil the needs.
This has been observed that respondents are widely dispersed on the basis of
product categories and the available retail market options.

Gupta S.L., et al,*9 , in his study he found that, the responses of customers are
quite mixed in the rural India. Customers prefer some of the popular brands but
they also prefer to use local brands. The loyalty status for brands is also moderate
in the rural markets. It seems that customers do not bother more about the purchase
decision of F.M.C.G. product. The house makers and other members of the family
influence the purchase decision. Rural area people have enough time to talk with
their friends and social groups so their decisions are also influenced the reference
groups
 CHAPTER-3

3.1 CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

What is CSR?

CSR is abbreviation for Corporate Social Responsibility. It is an idea which has

become very popular in business reporting. Every corporates has a policy concern
about CSR and producing a report and annually detail its CSR activity. And each
of us claims to be able to recognize corporate activity which is socially responsible
and activity which is not socially responsible. CSR mainly concerns mainly two
things: firstly, we do not necessarily agree with each other about what is socially
responsible; and although we claim to recognize what it is or is not when we are
asked to define it then we find this impossibly difficult.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a management concept whereby Corporation

integrate its social and environmental concerns in their business operations and
interactions with their stakeholders. CSR is generally understand as being the way
through which a corporates achieves a balance of economic, environmental and
social imperatives (“Triple-Bottom-Line- Approach”), while at the same time
addressing the expectations of shareholders and stakeholders. Which can be a
strategic business management concept, and charity, sponsorships or philanthropy.
Even the latter can make a valuable contribution towards poverty reduction, will
directly enhance the reputation of a company and strengthen its brand, the concept
of CSR clearly goes beyond that.
 economic
social
environmental

Figure 1 Triple-Bottom-Line

Promoting the uptake of CSR amongst SMEs requires approaches that fit the
respective needs and capacities of these businesses, and do not adversely affect
their economic viability. UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development
Organization) based its CSR program on the Triple Bottom Line Approach, which
has proven to be a successful tool for SMEs in the developing countries to assist
them in meeting social and environmental standards without compromising their
competitiveness. The TBL approach is used as a framework for measuring and
reporting corporate performance against economic, social and environmental
performance. It is an attempt to align private enterprises to the goal of sustainable
global development by providing them with a more comprehensive set of working
objectives than just profit alone. The perspective taken is that for an organization
to be sustainable, it must be financially secure, minimize (or ideally eliminate) its
negative environmental impacts and act in conformity with societal expectations.

Key CSR issues: environmental management, eco-efficiency, responsible sourcing,

stakeholder engagement, labour standards and working conditions, employee and
community relations, social equity, gender balance, human rights, good
governance, and anti-corruption measures.
A properly implemented CSR concept can bring along a variety of competitive
advantages, such as enhanced access to capital and markets, increased sales and
profits, operational cost savings, improved productivity and quality, efficient
human resource base, improved brand image and reputation, enhanced customer
loyalty, better decision making and risk management processes.

PRINCIPLES OF CSR

Because of the uncertainty surrounding the nature of CSR activity it is difficult to

define CSR and to be certain about any such activity. It is therefore imperative to
be able to identify such activity and we take the view that there are three basic
principles which together comprise all CSR activity.

These are: -

 Sustainability
 Transparency
 Accountability

1. Sustainability

This is concerned with the effect which action taken in the present has upon the
options available in the future. If resources are utilized in the present then they are
no longer available for use in the future, and this is of concern if the resources are
finite in quantity.

Thus, raw materials of an extractive nature, such as coal, iron or oil, are finite in
quantity and once used are not available for future use. At some point in the future
therefore alternatives will be needed to fulfil the functions currently provided by
these resources. This may be at some point in the relatively distant future but of
more immediate concern is the fact that as resources become depleted then the cost
of acquiring the remaining resources tends to increase, and hence the operational
costs of organizations tend to increase.

Sustainability therefore implies that society must use no more of a resource than
can be regenerated. This can be defined in terms of the carrying capacity of the
ecosystem and described with input – output models of resource consumption.
Thus, the paper industry for example has a policy of replanting trees to replace
those harvested and this has the effect of retaining costs in the present rather than
temporally externalizing them.

Viewing an organization as part of a wider social and economic system implies

that these effects must be taken into account, not just for the measurement of costs
and value created in the present but also for the future of the business itself.
Measures of sustainability would consider the rate at which resources are
consumed by the organization in relation to the rate at which resources can be
regenerated. Unsustainable operations can be accommodated for either by
developing sustainable operations or by planning for a future lacking in resources
currently required. In practice organizations mostly tend to aim towards less
unsustainability by increasing efficiency in the way in which resources are utilized.
An example would be an energy efficiency program.

2. Transparency

Transparency, as a principle, means that the external impact of the actions of the
organization can be ascertained from that organization’s reporting and pertinent
facts are not disguised within that reporting. Thus, all the effects of the actions of
the organization, including external impacts, should be apparent to all from using
the information provided by the organization’s reporting mechanisms.
Transparency is of particular importance to external users of such information as
these users lack the background details and knowledge available to internal users
of such information. Transparency therefore can be seen to follow from the other
two principles and equally can be seen to be a part of the process of recognition of
responsibility on the part of the organization for the external effects of its actions
and equally part of the process of transferring power to external stakeholders.

This is concerned with an organization recognizing that its actions affect the
external environment, and therefore assuming responsibility for the effects of its
actions. This concept therefore implies a quantification of the effects of actions
taken, both internal to the organization and externally. More specifically the
concept implies a reporting of those quantifications to all parties affected by those
actions. This implies a reporting to external stakeholders of the effects of actions
taken by the organization and how they are affecting those stakeholders.

This concept therefore implies a recognition that the organization is part of a wider
societal network and has responsibilities to all of that network rather than just to
the owners of the organization. Alongside this acceptance of responsibility
therefore must be a recognition that those external stakeholders have the power to
affect the way in which those actions of the organization are taken and a role in
deciding whether or not such actions can be justified, and if so at what cost to the
organization and to other stakeholders.

3. Accountability

Accountability therefore necessitates the development of appropriate measures of

environmental performance and the reporting of the actions of the firm. This
necessitates costs on the part of the organization in developing, recording and
reporting such performance and to be of value the benefits must exceed the costs.
Benefits must be determined by the usefulness of the measures selected to the
decision-making process and by the way in which they facilitate resource
allocation, both within the organization and between it and other stakeholders.
Such reporting needs to be based upon the following characteristics:

 Understandability to all parties concerned;

 Relevance to the users of the information provided;
  Reliability in terms of accuracy of measurement, representation of impact
and freedom from bias;
 Comparability, which implies consistency, both over time and between
different organizations.

Applicability of Corporate Social Responsibility to Companies

Corporate Social Responsibility is required for all companies viz. private limited
company, limited company. The following companies are necessary to constitute a
CSR committee:

In India under Companies Act, 2013,

 Companies with a net worth of Rs. 500 crores or greater, or

 Companies with a turnover of Rs. 1000 crores or greater, or
 Companies with a net profit of Rs. 5 crores or greater.
 Annual T/o
Rs.1000 Cr.
or More
(Sec 2(91))

Companies Act
2013 -CSR
Provisions

Net Profit of NetWorth of

Rs. 5 Cr. or Rs.500 Cr.
More (Sec or More
2(1)(f)) (Sec 2(57))

Figure 2 Criteria for implementation of CSR

If any of the above financial strength criteria are met, the Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) provisions and related rules will be applicable to the
company. These companies are required to form a CSR committee consisting of its
directors. This committee oversees the entire CSR activities of the Company.
Key Dimensions of CSR (Classification of Social Responsibility)

R esp on sibility tow ard s itself

R esp on sibility tow ard s em ploy ees

R esp on sibility tow ard s sh areho lders

R esp o n sib ility to w ards co n su m ers

R esp on sibility tow ard s state

R esp on sibility tow ard s en viron m en t

R esp on sibility tow ard s g overnm en t

CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

1. Responsibility towards itself

It is the responsibility of each corporate entity run business and to work towards
growth, expansion and stability and thus earn profits. If the corporation is to
achieve social and economic ends, organizational efficiency should be boosted up

2. Responsibility towards Employees

Employees are the most important part of an organization. Following are some of
the responsibilities which a business entity has towards its employees

 Timely payment
 Hygienic environment
  Good and impartial behavior
 Health care through yoga
 Recreational activities
 Encouraging them to take part in managerial decisions

3. Responsibility towards shareholders

It is the responsibility of corporate entity to safeguard the shareholders ‘investment

and make efforts to provide a reasonable return on their investment.

4. Responsibility towards state

Out of the profit available, the state is entitled to a certain share as per the income
tax laws. Utmost transparency has to be exerted regarding the profit &loss account
and the balance sheet.

5. Responsibility towards consumers

The Company should maintain high quality standards at reasonable prices. It

should not resort to malpractices such as hoarding and black-marketing.

6. Responsibility towards environment

It is the responsibility of the organization to contribute to the protection of

environment. It should produce eco -friendly products. Moreover, industrial waste
management must be taken care of.
ROLE OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN CSR

The board of directors of a company plays a significant role in CSR activities of

the company. The role of Board is as follows:

 Approval of the CSR policy.

 Ensuring its implementation.
 Disclosure of the contents of CSR policies related to its report.
 Placing the same on Company’s website.
 Ensuring that statutory specified amount is spend by the company with
reference to CSR activities.
 It’s significant to note that there is no penalty if the particular amount is not
spent on CSR activities. In such case, the board’s report must identify the
reason for such short spending

CSR COMMITTEE AND POLICY

All qualifying company required to have a CSR committee are required to spend at
least 2% of its average net profit for the directly preceding 3 financial years on
CSR activities. Additionally, the qualifying company shall be necessitated to
comprise a committee (CSR Committee) of the Board of Directors (Board)
comprising of 3 or more directors. The CSR Committee will prepare and
recommend to the Board, a policy which will specify the activities to be
undertaken (CSR Policy); advocate the amount of expenditure to be incurred on
the activities referred and monitor the CSR Policy related to the company. The
Board will take into account the recommendations made by the CSR Committee
and support the CSR Policy of the company.
Activities permitted under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

 Eradicating extreme hunger and poverty

 Promotion of education
 Promoting gender equality and empowering women
 Reducing child mortality
 Improving maternal health
 Combating human immunodeficiency virus, acquired, immune deficiency
syndrome, malaria and other diseases
 Ensuring environmental sustainability,
 Employment enhancing vocational skills, social business projects
 Contribution to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund or any other fund
set up by the Central Government or the State Governments for socio-
economic development, and
 Relief and funds for the welfare of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled
Tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women and such other
matters as may be prescribed

BUDGET OF CSR

 The Company Board of Directors shall ensure that in each financial year the
Company spends at least 2% of the average Net Profit made during the
three-immediate preceding financial years. ―Net profit‖ means the net
profit as per the financial statement of the company prepared in accordance
with the applicable provisions of the Act, but shall not include the
following: (i) Any profit arising from any overseas branch or branches of
the company, whether operated as a separate company or otherwise, and (ii)
Any dividend received from other companies in India which are covered
under and complying with the provisions of section 135 of the Act.
  As per section 135 of the Companies Act, the Company will report reasons
for under spending of the allocated CSR budget of the current financial year
in the template provided by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. This
reporting will be done Annual Report and signed off by the Board of
Directors.
 In case of any surplus arising out of CSR projects the same shall not form
part of business profits of the Company Page 12 of 12 IV. The Company
may collaborate or pool resources with other companies to undertake CSR
activities, through any non-profit organization, if required

CSR Benefited to Company, Stakeholders, General Public and Environmental

Company Benefits

 Improved financial performance

 Lower operating costs
 Enhanced brand image and reputation
 Increased sales and customer loyalty
 Greater productivity and quality
 More ability to attract and retain employees
 Reduced regulatory oversight
 Access to capital
 Workforce diversity
 Product safety and decreased liability

Benefit To General Public And Community

 Charitable contributions
 Employee volunteer programs
  Corporate involvement in community education, employment and
homelessness programs
 Product safety and quality

Environmental Benefits

 Greater material recyclability

 Better product durability and functionality
 Greater use of renewable resources

CSR activities of HUL

Industry Sector: FMCG and Consumer Durables.

Products/Services: Food brands; Homecare Brands; Personal Brands; and Water
Purifier Brand
CSR Activities: Trust/Foundation of CSR – Hindustan Uniliver Vitality
Foundation
CSR Areas:
1. Community Welfare;
2. Disaster Relief;
3.Education;
4. Employee Welfare;
5. Environment;
6. Healthcare;
7. Poverty Eradication;
8. Rural Development,
9. Vocational Training.
Some of the major CSR activities of HUL are as follows :

1. Greening Barrens (Water Conservation & Harvesting):

It has 2 main objectives:
a) To reduce water consumption in its own operations and generate sub-soil water
tables at its own sites through the principles of 5R – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,
Recover & Renew.
b) Help adjacent villages to implement appropriate models of watershed
development.

2. Shakti – Changing Lives in Rural India:

Shakti is HUL’s rural initiative, which targets small villages with population of
less than 2000. It seeks to empower under privileged rural women by providing
income-generating opportunities, health & hygiene education through Shakti Vani
program and creating access to relevant information through the Shakti
Community Portal.

3. Health & Hygiene Education:

Lifebuoy Swastya Chetna is a rural health and hygiene initiative, started in 2002,
was initiated in media dark villages in UP, MP. Bihar, WB, Maharashtra aand
Orissa for spreading awareness about washing hands with Lifebuoy soap.

4. Economic Empowerment of Women:

The Fair & Lovely Foundation is HUL’s initiative which aims at economic
empowerment of women across India. It aims to achieve this through providing
information, resources, inputs and support in the areas of education, career and
enterprise.

5. Special Education & Rehabilitation:

Under the Happy Home initiative, HUL supports special education and
rehabilitation of children with challenges.
a) Asha Daan: Initiated in 1976, HUL supported Mother Teresa and Missionaries
in Charity to set up a home in Mumbai for abandoned, challenged children and the
destitute.
b) Ankur: In 1993, HUL’s Doom Dooma Plantation Division set up Ankur for
special education of challenged children aged between 5 and 15 years. Ankur
provides educational. Vocational and recreational activities to over 35 children
with range of challenges like hearing or sight impairment, polio, cerebral palsy and
several learning difficulties.
c) Kappagam: Encouraged by Ankur’s success Kappagam (Shelter), the second
center for special education of challenged children, was set up in 1998 on HUL
Plantations in South India. It has 17 children.. The focus is same as that of Ankur.
d) Anbagam: This is another day care center (Center of Love), which was started in
2003 in south India plantations. It takes care of 11 children. Besides medical care
and meals, they too are being taught skills such that they can become self-reliant
and pursue elementary studies.

1. GREENING BARRENS - Water Conservation and Harvesting

HLL's Water Conservation and Harvesting project has two major objectives:
a) to reduce water consumption in its own operations and regenerate sub-soil water
tables at its own sites through the principles of 5R -- reduce, reuse, recycle, recover
and renew;
b) help adjacent villages to implement appropriate models of watershed
development.
Water scarcity is one of the biggest crises facing India in terms of spread and
severity. Water conservation and harvesting in HLL's own operations will help
conserve and regenerate this scarce resource. An attendant benefit will be
reduction in the consumption of energy that would have been spent in converting
and using that water. The support to communities in developing watersheds will
help in the economic development of areas adjacent to HLL sites.
Water management is a focus area for all HLL factories. Water conservation has
been made one of the key performance indicators of an HLL factory. Through a
series of technology innovations and novel processing routes HLL has reduced its
ground water consumption by over 50%. HLL has also applied technologies that
recycle effluent water after treatment – 70% of HLL sites are now zero discharge
sites. There are many other measures -- Reverse Osmosis Plants and Solar
Evaporation Ponds to name a few. A simultaneous benefit is saving in energy that
otherwise would have been consumed in drawing, pumping or converting water
into steam -- HLL's energy consumption per unit of production has come down by
61% since 1996. Since 2003, all HLL sites have begun to harvest rain water. Rain
water falling on factory premises is accumulated in ponds, thereby renewing sub-
soil water tables.
HLL is also committed to extending its efforts on water management to the larger
community, and has engaged in community projects in water adjacent to
manufacturing sites.
The Khamgaon soap factory is located in a dry and arid region of Maharashtra and
gets limited rainfall. Seven years back the factory started a pilot on ‘Watershed
Management’ on a 5-hectare plot to prevent soil degradation and conserve water.
The efforts have resulted in the creation of a green belt, which is the only visible
green patch in the area. The 5-hectare green belt is now a veritable forest of about
6300 trees, including over 1400 ornamental plants and over 600 fruitbearing plants.
There has also been a remarkable improvement in the quality of soil, and
significant conservation of water. This has been documented in a booklet,
'Greening Barrens', so that industry, government bodies and communities adopt
this widely. Encouraged by the results, HLL has extended the model to a
neighbouring village, Parkhed, in association with the TERI and the Bharatiya
Agro Industries Foundation. The community at Parkhed has already constructed 37
check dams. More than 20,000 saplings have been planted during the 2003
monsoon. For the first time, villagers were able to collect water and utilise it for
irrigation post monsoon. The initiative received appreciation at the Johannesburg
World Summit on Sustainable Development.
In association with an NGO, Vanrai, HLL's Silvassa manufacturing hub (in the
Union Territory of Dadra & Nagar Haveli) too has embarked on a long-term
project of water harvesting, which aims to dramatically change water availability,
taking it up to year-round availability from 4 months at present. At Karchond
village, near the Silvassa site, the community has built 18 bunds. Seven of them are
on a river running through the village, and 11 smaller ones at different water run-
off points. This has enabled the community to sow a second crop, thereby
significantly increasing their incomes. Through an Integrated Village Development
Programme, the project's ambit also includes alternate income-generating activities
through SHGs, forestry management, education of children, nutrition.
The programme of watershed management is being progressively extended to other
factories. The Hosur Coffee Factory has set an example in low-cost water
harvesting methods. Another example is the Yavatmal Personal Products Factory,
which has worked with the Social Forestry Department of the Maharashtra
Government to improve sub-soil water table in the area.
HLL's vision is to continuously innovate technologies to further reduce water
consumption and further increase conservation in its operations. Simultaneously,
HLL sites will progressively help communities, wherever required, to develop
watersheds.
2. Project Shakti business model
INTRODUCTION:

With the urban market saturated, FMCG companies are now targeting the rural
markets. In spite of the income imbalance between urban and rural India, rural
holds great potential since 70% of India's population lives there. Due to the recent
government measures like waiver of loans, national rural employment guarantee
scheme and increasing minimum support price, disposable income in rural India
has been rapidly increasing. However, rural markets present their own sets of
problems. These include poor infrastructure, dispersed settlements, lack of
education and a virtually nonexistent medium for communication. Furthermore,
retailers cannot be present in all the centres as many of them are so small that it
makes them economically unfeasible. Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) to tap
this market conceived of Project Shakti. This project was started in 2001 with the
aim of increasing the company's rural distribution reach as well as providing rural
women with income-generating opportunities. This is a case where the social goals
are helping achieve business goals.
The recruitment of a Shakti Entrepreneur or Shakti Amma (SA) begins with the
executives of HUL identifying the uncovered village. The representative of the
company meets the panchayat and the village head and identify the woman who
they believe will be suitable as a SA. After training she is asked to put up Rs
20,000 as investment which is used to buy products for selling. The products are
then sold door-to-door or through petty shops at home. On an average a Shakti
Amma makes a 10% margin on the products she sells.
An initiative which helps support Project Shakti is the Shakti Vani programme.
Under this programme, trained communicators visit schools and village
congregations to drive messages on sanitation, good hygiene practices and women
empowerment. This serves as a rural communication vehicle and helps the SA in
their sales.
The main advantage of the Shakti programme for HUL is having more feet on the
ground. Shakti Ammas are able to reach far flung areas, which were economically
unviable for the company to tap on its own, besides being a brand ambassador for
the company. Moreover, the company has ready consumers in the SAs who
become users of the products besides selling them.
Although the company has been successful in the initiative and has been scaling
up, it faces problems from time to time for which it comes up with innovative
solutions. For example, a problem faced by HUL was that the SAs were more
inclined to stay at home and sell rather than going from door to door since there is
a stigma attached to direct selling. Moreover, men were not liable to go to a
woman's house and buy products. The company countered this problem by hosting
Shakti Days. Here an artificial market place was created with music and promotion
and the ladies were able to sell their products in a few hours without encountering
any stigma or bias.
This model has been the growth driver for HUL and presently about half of HUL's
FMCG sales come from rural markets. The Shakti network at the end of 2008 was
45,000 Ammas covering 100,000+ villages across 15 states reaching 3 m homes.
The long term aim of the company is to have 100,000 Ammas covering 500,000
villages and reaching 600 m people. We feel that with this initiative, HUL has been
successful in maintaining its distribution reach advantage over its competitors. This
programme will help provide HUL with a growing customer base which will
benefit the company for years to come.

Summary
Launched in 2001, Project Shakti, aims to empower underprivileged rural women
by training them in health and hygiene and allowing them to undertake income-
generation activities.
Key program components
The women, known as Vanis (communicators), sell soap, shampoo and other
personal care products through social forums such as schools and village
gatherings. There are currently over 45,000 Shakti entrepreneurs in more than
135,000 villages across 15 Indian states. Unilever provides training in sales
practices, commercial knowledge and bookkeeping to help them become micro-
entrepreneurs.
Project Shakti also consists of public awareness programs focusing on health and
hygiene, as well as an i-Shakti initiative that allows villagers to access information
through kiosks. By the end of 2007, more than 45,000 Shakti entrepreneurs
covered 3 million homes in 100,000 villages in 15 Indian states. Unilever aims to
increase the number of Shakti entrepreneurs that they recruit, train and employ
from 45,000 in 2010 to 75,000 in 2015.
Hindustan Lever has built alliances with telecom & banking companies to increase
the income of the Shakti family with the sale of telecom prepaid currency, sim
activations and acting as a banking correspondent.
Shakti is now being adapted in other Unilever markets such as Sri Lanka, Viet
Nam and Bangladesh, and is also being considered for Latin American and African
markets. At the end of 2007, Sri Lanka had over 3,500 entrepreneurs covering
275,000 households in 4,000 villages, and 4,250 entrepreneurs in Bangladesh were
covering 400,000 households in 8,000 villages.
3.2 DETAILED ABOUT THE COMPANY

Index

Hindustan Unilever limited

All about Branding

Strategies adopted by HUL

Umbrella branding

Branding procedure

Branding in Rural Market

Case study
The Hindustan Unilever Limited

INTRODUCTION:
Hindustan Unilever Limited has traditionally been a company, which incorporates
latest technology in all its operations. The Hindustan Unilever Research Centre
(HURC) was set up in 1958, and now has facilities in Mumbai and Bangalore.
HURC and the Global Technology Centers in India have over 200 highly qualified
scientists and technologists, many with post-doctoral experience acquired in the
US andEurope.
Hindustan Unilever Limited is India’s largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Company, touching the lives of two out of three Indians with over 20 distinct
categories in Home & Personal Care Products and Foods & Beverages. Hindustan
Unilever Limited is also one of the country’s largest exporters; it has been
recognized as a Golden Super Star Trading House by the Government of India.
The mission that inspires Hindustan Unilever Limited’s over 15,000 employees,
including over 1,300 managers, is to “add vitality to life.” HUL meets everyday
needs for nutrition, hygiene, and personal care with brands that help people feel
good, look good and get more out of life. The products of Hindustan Unilever
Limited are manufactured over 40 factories across India. The operations involve
over 2,000 suppliers and associates. Hindustan Unilever Limited’s distribution

network, comprising about 4,000 redistribution stockiest, covering 6.3 million

retail outlets reaching the entire urban population, and about 250 million rural
consumers. Some of the products manufactured by Hindustan Unilever Limited
are: Lifebuoy, Lux, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Pond’s, Sunsilk, Clinic
Plus, Pepsodent, Close-up, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Kissan, Knorr-Annapurna,
Kwality Wall’s. These products are popular in Indian as well as foreign
markets.For achieving all the goals set, the company needs its employees and to
get their support the company needs to motivate them. BRANDING STRATEGY
Their main challenge was to reverse the down trading in the categories and re-
establish the relevance of their brands in the mind of the consumer. In 2000, they
had 110 brands, many undifferentiated and lacking scale. They chose to focus on
35 power brands covering all consumer appeal and price segments. They are
already seeing the benefits. Six brands — Brooke Bond, Lifebuoy, Lux, Fair &
Lovely, Rin and Wheel — have emerged as mega brands in the last five years,
each with sales of more than Rs.500 crores.

Meeting Everyday Needs of People Everywhere

Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) is India's largest fast moving consumer goods
company, with leadership in Home & Personal Care Products and Foods &
Beverages. HLL's brands, spread across 20 distinct consumer categories, touch the
lives of two out of three Indians. They endow the company with a scale of
combined volumes of about 4 million tonnes and sales of Rs.10,000 crores.

The leading business magazine, Forbes Global, has rated Hindustan Lever as the
best consumer household products company. Far Eastern Economic Review has
rated HLL as India’s most respected company.

The vision that inspires HLL's 32,400 employees (40,000 including Group
Companies), including about 1,425 managers, is to “meet everyday needs of
people everywhere - to anticipate the aspirations of our consumers and customers
and to respond creatively and competitively with branded products and services
which raise the quality of life.” This objective is achieved through the brands that
the company markets.

It is an ethos HLL shares with its parent company, Unilever, which holds
51.55% of the equity. Our vision
Unilever is a unique company, with a proud history and a bright future. We have
ambitious plans for sustainable growth and an intense sense of social purpose.
A clear direction for us
Our purpose is to make sustainable living commonplace. We work to create a
better future every day, with brands and services that help people feel good, look
good, and get more out of life.
In 2009, we launched The Compass – our strategy for sustainable growth. It sets
out our clear and compelling vision to double the size of the business, while
reducing our environmental footprint and increasing our positive social impact and
gives life to our determination to build a sustainable business for the long term.
This is captured in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.
By combining our multinational expertise with our deep roots in diverse local
cultures, we’re continuing to provide a range of products to suit a wealth of
consumers. We’re also strengthening our strong relationships in the emerging
markets we believe will be significant for our future growth.
And by leveraging our global reach and inspiring people to take small, everyday
actions, we believe we can help make a big difference to the world.
"We cannot close our eyes to the challenges that the world faces. Business must
make an explicit and positive contribution to addressing them. I’m convinced we
can create a more equitable and sustainable world for all of us by doing so,” says
Unilever CEO Paul Polman.
“But this means that business has to change. The Unilever Sustainable Plan is a
blueprint for sustainable growth. And in 2014 we are strengthening our Plan with
new commitments to drive further transformational change.”
Business nature

HLL is India's largest marketer of Soaps, Detergents and Home Care products. It
has the country’s largest Personal Products business, leading in Shampoos, Skin
Care Products, Colour Cosmetics, and Deodorants. HLL is also the market leader
in Tea, Processed Coffee, branded Wheat Flour, Tomato Products, Ice cream,
Soups, Jams and Squashes.

HLL is also one of the country's biggest exporters and has been recognised as a
Golden Super Star Trading House by the Government of India; it is a net foreign
exchange earner. HLL is India's largest exporter of branded fast moving consumer
goods.

Products, Basmati Rice, Castor Oil and its Derivatives. It is India's largest exporter
of MarineProducts, and one of the largest global players in castor.

Market leading brands

HLL’s brands have become household names. The company’s strategy is to

concentrate its resources on 30 national power brands, and 10 other brands which
are strong in certain regions.

The top five brands together account for sales of over Rs.3000 crores. Each of
these mega brand has a potential scale of Rs.1000 crores in the foreseeable future.
Some of the big brands in Soaps and Detergents are Lifebuoy, Lux, Liril, Hamam,
Breeze, Dove, (all soaps), Surf Excel, Surf, Rin, Wheel (the number one detergent
brand in India, and HLL's

largest), 501, Sunlight (all detergents). HLL also markets the Vim and Domex
range of Home Care Products.

In the Personal Products business, HLL's Hair Care franchises are Clinic, Sunsilk
and Lux shampoos; the company markets Nihar oil. In Oral Care, the portfolio
comprises Close-up and Pepsodent toothpastes and toothbrushes. In Skin Care,
HLL markets Fair & Lovely Skin Cream and Lotion, the largest selling Skin Care
Product in India; a brand developed in India, it is now exported to over 30
countries. It has been extended as an Ayurvedic cream, an under-eye cream, a soap
and a talc, in line with the strategy to take brands across relevant categories. The
other major Skin Care franchises are Pond’s, Vaseline, Lakme and Pears. In Colour
Cosmetics, HLL markets the Lakme and Elle-18 ranges. In Deodorants, the key
brands are Rexona, Axe, Denim and Pond's, while the

Talc brands are Pond's, Liril, Fair & Lovely, Vaseline and Lifebuoy. Axe and
Denim are HLL’s franchises for Men’s toiletries. HLL has recently launched Lever
Ayush Ayurvedic Health & Personal Care Products.

HLL has started franchised Lakme Beauty Salons, offering standardised services,
in line with the strategy to add a service dimension to relevant brands.

HLL is one of the world’s largest packet Tea marketer. Its Tea brands – Taj Mahal,
Red Label, Taaza, A1, 3Roses - are among the top brands in the country; it also
markets Lipton Ice Tea.

HLL and Pepsi have formed an alliance to distribute a full range of tea and coffee
and softbeverages through vending machines; HLL already has a base of around
15000 such machines.

Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) currently on a price discount include 150 gm Lifebuoy
Gold (Rs 3 OFF) TRYING to match prices with the smaller players, large FMCG
companies have been on a price-cutting spree. Of late, Hindustan Lever has
announced ‘new’ prices for their various brands to beat sluggish sales, combined
with the introduction of lower-sized packs to get volumes.
HLL managers describe the exercise as that of dropping price barriers to induce
growth for their brands rather than trying to beat the smaller players with their
pricing. More than benchmarking competition, dropping prices is all about
triggering growth and this has always been an integral part of their strategy.
Straddling almost every price segment with its SKUs, HLL has also been trying to
upgrade its consumers, even at the cost of cannibalizing its own brands. Besides,
freebies and promotions have finally been replaced by direct price reductions to
lure consumers. Observes Sujoy Mishra, an analyst.

At Kotak Securities, “Promotions have shifted to the trade while freebies have
been replaced by price cuts. “ Considering almost every FMCG brand was doling
out a freebie, it was time for FMCG players to differentiate themselves. Observes
A. Sundarajan, Managing Director of market research firm, Market Search, “The
round of freebies has already been played out by the FMCG companies. They are
now coming back to their core brands at a lower price.” HLL have deliberately
introduced small pack sizes.

PLACE PLANNING STRATEGY

70% of India’s population resides in villages. Penetrating the rural markets is,
therefore, one of the key challenges for any marketer. While rural markets present
a great opportunity to companies, they also impose major challenges. At HLL, they
have been at the forefront of experimenting with innovative methods to reach the
rural consumer

SINGLE DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL

For rural India, HLL has established a single distribution channel by consolidating
categories. In a significant move, with long-term benefits, HLL has mounted an
initiative, Project Streamline, to further increase its rural reach with the help of
rural sub-stockists. It has already appointed 6000 such sub-stockists. As a result,
the distribution network directly covers about 50,000 villages, reaching about 250
million consumers corporate relationships which in turn prove beneficial for the
functioning of the
company.
“The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your successes - any fool
can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your mistakes.”

ALL ABOUT BRANDING

The term brand means different things to the different roles of buyer and seller,
with buyers generally associating brand with a product or service, and merchants
associating brand with identity. Brand can also identify the company behind the
specific product -- that's not just a detergent, that's “Surf Excel detergent”. This use
of brand puts a "face" behind the name, so to speak, even if the "face" is the result
of advertising copy and television commercials. This use of brand also says
nothing of quality, just the buyer's exposure to the brand's PR and media hype. For
the typical merchant, branding is a way of taking everything that is good about the
company -- positive shopping experience, professionalism, superior service,
product knowledge, whatever the company decides is important for a customer to
believe about the company -- and wrapping these characteristics into a package
that can be evoked by the brand as signifier.

Introduction to Branding

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, sign,

symbol or design or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and
services of one seller or group and to differentiate them to those for competitors”.
A brand is thus a product or service that’s adds a Dimension that differentiates it in
some way from other products or services designed to satisfy the same need. These
differences may be functional, rational, or tangible- relate to product performance
of the brand.
Branding has been around for centuries as a means to distinguish the goods of one
producer to those of another. The earliest signs of branding can be traced to Europe
where the medieval guilds required that craftsmen put trademarks on their product
to protect themselves and producer against inferior quality substitutes. Also in fine
arts branding began with artists signing their works. Brands today play a number of
important roles that improve the consumer’s lives and enhance the financial value
of firms.
Brands identify the source or maker of the product and allow consumers-either
individual or organizations- to assign responsibility to a particular manufacturer or
distributor. Consumers may evaluate the identical product differently depending
how it is branded. Consumers lean about the brand with its past experience and the
marketing program. As consumers lives becomes more complicated, time starved
the ability of brand to simplify decision making is invaluable. Brands also perform
valuable functions for the firm.
First they simplify the product handling and tracing. Brands help to organize
inventory and accounting records. The brand name can be protected registered
trademarks. The intellectual property rights ensure that the firm can safely invest in
the brand and can reap the benefits over a long period of time.

Brands can signal a certain level of quality so that satisfied buyers can easily
choose the product again. Brand loyalty provides predictability and security of
demand for the firm and creates barriers to entry that makes it difficult for other
firms to enter the market. This brand loyalty can translate into willingness to pay
higher price. In this sense branding can be seen as powerful means to secure a
competitive advantage. Brands represent enormously valuable pieces of legal
property that can influence consumer’s behavior. Strong brand results in better
earnings and profit performance for firms, which in turn, creates greater value for
shareholders.
Hence many reputed company like P & G, Crompton Greaves, etc have adopted
branding strategy as a tool for their sale of product. Also, HUL is no exception.

Let us now see, certain branding strategies adopted by HUL:-

HLL has a large brand portfolio consisting of nearly 110 bands. In every product
line, it has built a number of brands over a period of time. Quite a few brands have
come to its fold from the parent company. It has also acquired several ongoing
brands from the market. HLL also vigorously pursues brand extension strategy.
And concurrently, HLL undertakes line pruning and brand restructuring and
consolidation, based on marketing compulsions. HLL is also playing the
rejuvenation and re-launch game. With great benefit the corporate-level endeavors
at business expansion and diversification are also throwing new challenges on the
brand strategy front. HLL lends itself for a proper understanding of the complexity
of the brand management task. We shall examine how HLL handles the complex
demands in brand management.
Such an array of brands is the outcome of a conscious corporate strategy by HLL.
As a corporate, HLL wants to be a leader in every one of its businesses and the
strategy is to fight on the strength of the competitive advantage arising from the
possession of strong brands. It is this strategy that is getting reflected in the
development of a multitude of strong brands. If we take the business of bathing
soaps, as an example, HLL has the objective of being a national player (not a niche
or a regional marketer) and the leader therein. HLL also wants about 30 per cent of
the corporate income to come from this line.
So, HLL opted for the strategy of developing quite a few strong brands in this line,
and among them they cover different market segments and price points. Dove,
Lux, Liril, Rexona, Pears and Lifebuoy are the outcome of such a well planned
brand strategy implemented over time. Lifebuoy is 100 years old and Liril 15 years
old. In fact, HLL has about 10 brands of toilet soaps each having good volume of
sale to its credit. The point is that decisions on brand portfolio are a fundamental
expression of the company’s objectives and strategy governing a given business.

HLL Locates Positioning Opportunities:

HLL methodically goes about the task of developing a brand portfolio across a
product category. It first identifies the various positioning opportunities across
benefits, target groups and price points. Existing brads are mapped across these
positioning opportunities, and gaps for possible new offers are explored.
The company then estimates the likely volumes for each of the possible
opportunity and the financial viability and sustainability of the propositions in the
long term. If some of these gaps look promising, HLL goes ahead with the plans.
It examines the existing set of brands with the company, the product technologies
available, the benefits that can be provided and other considerations that have a
bearing on the company’s long term interests in the business. Finally, if the
company decides to go in for the new offer, a decision has to be taken as to
whether new brands should be created or extensions if existing brands should be
preferred or ongoing brands from the market acquired.

HLL hires brands to capture new opportunities:

Towards the close of the 1990s, HLL found that the germicide segment of the soap
market was growing fast, with RCI’s Dettol antiseptic soap leading it. HLL did not
have suitable offer in its stable to capture a share of this segment. Lifebuoy was not
strictly meeting the particular benefit.
HLL knew that launching and developing a new brand would take a lot of time and
resources, and the company would miss the market if it chose this route. HLL did
not have the product formula either to enter this segment. It was in this background
that HLL decided to hire the Savlon brand from J&J. Savlon was a successful
antiseptic lotion, a competitor to Dettol lotion. Just as the Dettol soap owed its
origin to the success of the Dettol lotion, HLL assessed that a Savlon antiseptic
soap could be successfully extended from the Savlon lotion.
It entered into an agreement with J&J for the use of Savlon brand name and the
product formula, and launched the Savlon antiseptic soap. HLL very deftly
managed successfully new brand launch and merged as a challenger to Dettol soap.
J&J secures a good royalty from HLL for lending the brand. It is a potentially win-
win arrangement for both companies.

HUL Products

You may have seen a variety of water purifier advertisements and so may be

confused on which one to buy. This one is about Hindustan Unilever PureIt and
is not a recommendation to buy but just a review on how it works and performs
over others.

The main advantage of PureIT water purifier is that you don’t have to worry about
either continuous water supply or electricity supply. Having said that, it may also
be a disadvantage that you need to manually put in water every time the water level
depletes to near zero. The bottom transparent bottom chamber can store up to a
maximum of 9 litres of water and the top chamber another 9 litres. Hence if your
family is a big one say consisting of at least 8-9 members, then you may have to
fill the water chamber multiple times a day.
However, like most of the families if only 4 or 5 people exist, then you may have
to add water every couple of  days.

The way this works is simple. We add water to the top chamber which is
unfortunately not transparent and so  have to be very careful when it is just about
to fill completely. The moment you pour in the water, it goes  through a
‘Microfibre Mesh‘ that removes any visible dirt. The next stage is to go through a
Compact carbon Trap that further removes any dirt, if present besides removing
any parasites or pesticides.

The water will then be purified using the proprietary Germ kill battery that kills
harmful bacteria and Viruses.

Then the water reaches the lower part of the Unit where it goes through a polisher
that adds taste to the water and makes it completely odorless. Then the water rises
above the chamber and falls into the visible lower chamber from which a tap
arises.

The battery has a life indicator and normally lasts for nearly a year (for single
family consisting of 4 members). The life is indicated by a bar, which when turns
red should be immediately be replaced. The battery costs only Rs.350 and the
entire unit cost just Rs.2000.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) is extending its OOH (Out of

Home) business by setting up 'experiential kiosks' under the Lipton brand.
Graduating from its existing vending machines, almost 50 such kiosks are planned
this year which it would set up at corporate parks, railway stations and airports.
According to HUL officials, "Unlike the vending machines where you just need to
push a button, the new experiential kiosks would serve mock tails and heath
oriented beverages made from HUL's beverage brands. Apart from beverages, the
kiosks are also expected to serve ice-creams. Through the kiosks we want to give
experiential bursts for our beverage brands."

The kiosks would be run on a franchise model. “We would have a business partner
on board and the kiosks will be run on 10 by 10 sq ft area,” added the official.
Having done a pilot test in Delhi recently, HUL is now poised to roll out these
kiosks nationally along the lines of its existing ice-cream parlour brand - Swirl’s
which is also run through franchisees. In fact, ice-creams have become a
profitable business for HUL within its foods portfolio which includes beverages
and processed foods.

Meanwhile within the foods business, HUL intends staying away from the ready-
to-eat (RTE) business. “We have recently introduced the ready-to-cook range
under Knorr but we certainly would not be entering the RTE category in foods. In
future, there would be more products under the Knorr franchise but these would be
adapted from our international portfolio,” HUL officials stated.

HUL's brands - like Lifebuoy, Lux, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Pond's,
Sunsilk, Clinic, Pepsodent, Close-up, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Kissan, Knorr-
Annapurna, Kwality Wall's – are household names across the country and span
many categories - soaps, detergents, personal products, tea, coffee, branded staples,
ice cream and culinary products. They are manufactured over 40 factories across
India. The operations involve over 2,000 suppliers and associates. HUL's
distribution.

Umbrella Brands Rule!

The 1980s witnessed a revolution in the understanding of the working of the
brands. Marketers depict brands as a reflection of customers’ own personalities, so
that they can relate to their products well. In fact the distinguishing aspect of the
modern marketing has been its focus upon the creation of differentiated brands and
using them as weapons for launching multi-level attacks on competition. Market
research has been used to help identify and develop bases of brand differentiation.
A brand identifies a product and its sources, but it does even more. Along came
brand extension. Today brand extension strategies are widely employed because of
beliefs that they build and communicate strong brand positioning, enhance
awareness and increase profitability.
Brands are often extended beyond their original categories to include new product
categories. Research has proved that the success of brand extension depends on the
transfer of parent brand awareness and associations to the extension. The transfer
of these quality perceptions is the key in umbrella branding. An umbrella brand is a
brand that covers diverse kinds of products which are more or less related. It
applies also to any company that is identified only by its brand and history. It is
contrasted with individual branding in which each product in a portfolio is given a
unique identity and brand name.
Hindustan Unilever Ltd’s (HUL) beverage brands have been amalgamated under
two umbrella brands – Brooke Bond and Lipton and in the fabric wash category,
the company has retained only Rin, Surf and Wheel, HUL has withdrawn brands
such as Sunlight, 501, Dalda and Nihar; it plans to withdraw some more brands
and group them under a few umbrella brands. HUL is currently focusing on 35
power brands.
Consumer goods major Hindustan Lever (HLL) has decided to develop Dalda as
the umbrella brand for its cooking products. Consequently, it is planning to de-
emphasise the Flora brand of sunflower edible oil.
A source said this is following HLL’s decision to focus on power brands across
categories. “Flora does not fall in the list. It is not paying due attention to build the
brand image.”
Also, following competition from international and domestic players in refined
edible oils, such as Sweekar and Saffola from Marico, Sundrop from Agro Tech
Foods (formerly ITC Agrotech), among others, has compounded HLL’s woes,
analysts said.
Dalda has a market share of about 29 per cent in the consumer packs vanaspati
market, while Flora’s share has dropped to 3 per cent, analysts said.
HLL is now focusing on innovation and differentiate products. The company has
begun test-marketing Dalda Classic, a cooking product with butter aroma in Tamil
Nadu. It has Dalda vanaspati, Dalda refined groundnut oil and Dalda Activ.
The 7-lakh tonne branded oil market is dominated by Marico brands Sweekar and
Saffola, having a combined market share of 15 per cent each, followed by Sundrop
at 13 per cent. Even regional brands have become popular in several markets.
The slippages in the branded oils market is owing to two factors—the sharp
increase in selling prices, which has made consumers look for cheaper

alternatives in regional and local offerings, and a change in the price equation of
soya bean oil vis-a-vis sunflower oil, industry sources said.
According to analysts, pricing is critical in the branded cooking oil market where
consumption of low priced loose oil is huge. Also, consumers are shifting towards
groundnut oil and soyabean oil from sunflower oil.

Certainly the well-traveled Indian consumer who had seen and touched the brand
abroad were the first set that moved towards the brand for its superior and “gentle
on skin” properties. Others who sampled the brand had mixed opinions.
Occasionally you heard the sob story from a neighbour , on how a Dove bar got
over in just four days, when the Rs 10 soap lasted for a month, giving rise to rather
unkind remarks that Dove was ¼ moisturiser and ¾ love. This set of consumers
used the bar for washing the face while a less costly soap would be used for the
rest of the body, a value-for-money approach.
From those use-for-special occasion days, Dove has come a long way. Last year,
HUL executives claim that Dove has grown by 100% in shampoos and by 42% in
soaps. “Dove is the largest premium brand in the Hindustan Unilever portfolio,”
says Rajaram Narayanan, vice president, hair care and Lakme, HUL. Now the
Dove portfolio delivers Rs 400 crore in sales.
Of this, the soap, or cleansing bar, as HUL executives would call it accounts for
only Rs 200 crore. The rest comes from hair care, a category that Dove entered in
India about two years back. The rise of modern trade formats and an evolving
consumer has also ensured that even emerging categories like body washes and
hair conditioners get more buyers.
Dove has capitalised on this trend. Apart from distribution in modern format
stores, where Dove claims to be one of the leading brands with 11.54% share, the
brand has also entered adjacent categories. In body washes, Dove claims to be
nearly 19% of the market, while hair conditioners get the brand sales of around Rs
40 crore.
All this has been a result of carefully managing the umbrella brand according to
Rajaram, who says that the company was careful enough to not tamper with the
core values right from the word go.
Dove did what it does best all over the world – not use supermodels to endorse the
brand. Rather it got real women who used the product to give testimonials of their
experience with the brand. In India, Dove’s brand team in the 1990s, led by Harish
Manwani, now Unilever’s president , Asia, Africa, Central & Eastern Europe,
decided to adopt the same line of thought for the Indian market too. “In some ways
the brand was the opposite of Lux, the beauty bar of film stars. Dove showed
beauty in ordinary people,” says cinematographer and film director, Rajiv Menon,
who was involved in making the earliest ads for Dove.

Branding procedures:
How do you “BRAND” a product?
Although HUL provides the impetus to brand creation through marketing programs
and other activities, ultimately a brand is something that resides in the mind of the
consumers. A brand is a perpetual identity that is rooted in reality but reflects the
perceptions and perhaps even the ultimate choice of the consumers. Branding is
endowing products and services with the power of brands. To brand a product, it is
necessary to teach the consumers “who” the product-by giving a name. Branding
involves creating mental structures and helping consumers organize their
knowledge about products and services in a way that clarifies their decision
making and in process provides value to the firm

Branding can be applied virtually anywhere a consumer has a choice. It is possible

to brand:
A physical good (Knorr soup, clinic plus shampoo or Fair & lovely),
A service,
A store,
A place,
A person(Shusmita sen,Aishwarya Rai) ,
An organization

Brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational, and cultural image that
consumer has associated with HUL and its product. When you think of

Lifebouy, you think of hygiene. When you think of Lux, you think of Aishwarya
Rai . When you think of IBM, you think of ‘Big Blue’. The fact that you remember
the brand name and have positive associations with that brand makes your product
selection easier and enhances the value and satisfaction you get from product.
While Brand X or even Cornetto ice -creams may win blind taste tests over
choclate fudge, the fact is that more people buy cornetto than any other ice cream.
The fond memories of childhood and refreshment that people have when they eat
Cornetto is often more important than a little bit better ice-cream taste. It I this
emotional relationship with brands that make them so powerful.

Purpose of Branding

It is very important to identify the purpose behind Branding.The purpose of

branding is to create a powerful and lasting emotional connection with customers
and other audiences. A brand is a set of elements or “brand assets” that in
combination create a unique, memorable, unmistakable, and valuable relationship
between an organization and its customers. The brand is carried by a set of
compelling visual, written and vocal tools to represent the business plan and
intentions of an organization.

Branding is the voice and image that represents your business plan to the outside
world. What your company, products and services stand for should

all be captured in your branding strategy, and represented consistently throughout

all your brand assets and in your daily marketing activities

The brand image that carries this emotional connection consists of the many
manageable elements of branding system, including both visual image assets and
language assets. The process of managing the brand to the business plan is
important not only in “big change situation” where the brand redefinition is
required, but also in the management of routine marketing variables and tactics.
This does not have to be a “ground-up” situation where there are wholesale
changes to the business. Rather it is more common that specific changes to the
changes to the business plan are incremental and the work of the brand strategist
and designer is to interpret these changes and revise the branding strategy and
resulting brand assets and define their use in the full range of marketing variables.

Brand Identity

Brand Identity includes brand names, logos, positioning, brand associations, and
brand personality, brand toons etc. A good brand name gives a good first
impression and evokes positive associations with the brand. A positioning
statement tells what business the company is in, what benefits it provides and why
it is better than the completion? Brand personality adds emotion, culture and myth
to brand identity by the use of a famous personality

(Aishwarya Rai), a character (Pilsbury doughbouy), an animal (the Merrill lynch

bull) etc.

How do we determine our Brand Identity?

Brand has been called the most powerful idea in commercial world, yet few
companies create a brand identity. Do you want your company’s brand identity
created for you by competitors and unhappy customers? Of course not. Our advice
to executives is to research their customers and find the top ranked reasons that the
customers buy their product rather than their competitors. Then, pound that
message in every ad, in every news release, in communications with employees
and in every sales call or media interview. By continuous repetition of messages
customer will think of your product and then buy it.
Tools for Building Brand Identity
Brand builders use a set of tools to strengthen and project the brand image; Strong
brands typically exhibit an owned word, a slogan, a color, a symbol, and set of
stories.
Owned Word
Company Word
Liril “Hygiene”

Fair and lovely “Skin care”

Rexona “Freshness”

Knorr “Food”

A strong brand name should trigger another word, a favorable one. Here is the list
of brands that own a word:

Slogan
HUL has successfully added a slogan or tagline to its brand name which is
repeated in every ad they use. Here are some well-known brands slogans, which
people on the street may easily recall or recognize:
Lifebouy “ab kitanuon ke liye saare raaste bandh!”
Liril “La La lala La”
Knorr “Restaurant jaisa ghar ka khanna”
Taj Mahal Tea “Wah taj”

Colors
It helps HUL to brand, by use of a consistent set of color to a product as it helps in
brand recognition. Ponds paint all its cosmetics pink. Yellowish green is the color
of Liril.
Symbols and Logos
Companies would be wise to adapt a symbol or logo to use in their
communications. HUL hired a well-known personality, hoping that her quality
transfer to the brand. HUL uses Aishwarya Rai who has worldwide recognition and
likableness, to advertise its soap. HUL has sign contracts with top personalities to
serve as their symbols, even naming the product after them.

Cartoons and Animations

A less expensive approach is to develop a character, animated, to etch the brand’s
image into customer’s mind. The advertising agency Leo Burnett has successfully
created a number of memorable animated characters. Here are some well known
brand cartoons which people may recognize:

Company Cartoon or Animation

Pillsbury Doughboy
7 Up Fido Dido

Objects

Still another approach is to choose an object to represent a company or

brand.  Dabur has joined hands with Walt Disney to put Mickey Mouse on 200ml
Real-Mickey juice packs. Companies have developed many logos or
abstracts, which are easily remembered by people. Even the way the brand
name is written makes a brand recognizable and memorable.

Brand Effectiveness
With an increase in global competition, branding has become a source of
competitive advantage. In rapidly evolving market for consumer, and industrial
products and services, the source of next generation competency will be branding.
In this briefing we demonstrate how to calculate the brand strength, the price
premium associated with the products categories, and type of customers attracted
to the “Premium Products”. Marketers who match their brand with customers
needs will have a sustainable competitive advantage.
Measuring Brand Effectiveness
There are many metrics to measure the potential of and actual effectiveness of
brands. The simplest way is to apply the concept of what we call the 4 D’s of
Branding; differentiation, distinctiveness, defendable, digit-able.

Distinctiveness: Our brand should be distinct when compared to our competitors

and to all spoken and visual communications to which your target audiences will
be exposed. The more unique and distinct your communications, the wider the
filed of effective competitive strength it will have. There are simple means to apply
to test the distinctiveness of your brand.

Differentiation: the brand strategy and brand assets must set you’re offering apart
and clearly articulate the specific positioning intent of your offering.

Defendable: you will be investing in creating your brand assets and in all cases
your brand must have proprietary strength to keep others from using close
approximations. This applies to your trade names and other proprietary words as
well as to your logos, symbols and other visual assets.

Digit-able: in most businesses there is strong and growing element of electronic

communications and commerce that dictate all brand assets be leveraged
effectively in tactile and electronics form. This goes for all brand assets.
Much of the brand manager’s work is to build a brand image. But its job doesn’t
stop there. The brand manager needs to make sure that brand experience matches
the brand image. Much can go wrong. A fine brand of canned soup described in a
full page color ad may be found in dented and dusty condition in the bottom shelf
of a supermarket. The ad describing a gracious hotel chain is belied by the
behavior of a surly concierge.

Building brand therefore calls for more than brand image building. It calls for
managing every brand contact that customer might have with brand. Since all the
employees, distributors and dealers can affect brand experience.

The Brand
To any individual a brand (in his mind) is a complex combination of experiences,
beliefs, perceptions and associations that have grown up over time. For example
Coca-Cola is a company brand, a product brand, a service brand and a brand with a
long history. It is a brand which may represent (to any one individual) diversity,
internationality, technical excellence, financial strength etc. etc. It may also mean
insensitivity, environmental pollution, abuse of power and other negative
perceptions.

Perceiving the brand:

An individual builds up his perceptions of a brand via a wide range of
communications channels. They are as follows:

Experience: The most powerful influence is experiential. This is when the

individual actually has a "Brand experience". The most obvious are: -

 He buys Kwality wall’s branded product or service.

  He uses a dove shampoo.
 He visits a corporate website.
 He attends an interview at the company.
 He contacts the company office for information.
 He meets an employee of the company.
 He buys a share in the company, etc.

Advertising: Over time an individual who lives in a country in which the

company/brand is active, or travels to one on business or vacation, will be exposed
to their advertising. This advertising may be in a wide range of media:
 TV commercials for products and services
 Recruitment ads inviting employment applications
 "Corporate" TV commercials promoting the company's "reputation"
 Web based advertising
 An ad for the company’s branded products or services in a wide variety of
print media.
 Billboards on highways
 Radio
 Point of sale etc
Media reports and stories: Individuals will be exposed to a wide variety of
reports about companies in the media (print and broadcast) where the editorial
content is only partly influence able by the company (in some cases) or not at all
(in most cases). These stories will come from a variety of primary and secondary
sources: -

 Press releases
 Press conferences
 Reporting of "events"
  Investigative journalism
 Stories passed to the media by third parties (Non governmental
organizations etc.)

Professional/business interest: For some individuals to interface professionally,

or from a specific business need, with famous companies (or to observe them) is
part of their job. They will usually procure their information from a variety of
sources and via a variety of channels of communication. These individuals have a
special interest in the companies and they include: -
 Financial analysts and journalists with an interest in share performance
 Existing or potential suppliers of products and services
 Existing or potential industrial/commercial customers

Building the Brand

The art of marketing is largely art of brand building. When something is not a
brand, it will probably be viewed as a commodity. Then price is the thing that
counts. When price is the only thing that counts then the low cost producer wins.
But just having a brand is not enough. What does the brand name mean? What
associations, performances and expectations does it evoke? What degree of
preferences does it create?
Choosing a Brand Name
A brand name first must be chosen then its various meanings and promises must be
built up through brand identity work. In choosing a brand name, it must be
consistent with the value positioning of the brand. In naming a product or service
the company may face many possibilities: it could choose name of the person ,
location, quality, or an artificial name.

Among the desirable qualities of a brand name. Some are:

  It should suggest something about the product benefits.
 It should suggest product qualities such action or color
 It should be easy to pronounce, recognize and remember; short names help a
lot to recognize the product to the customers.
 It should be distinctive.
 It should not carry poor meanings in other countries and languages etc.

Attributes: A strong brand should trigger in buyers mind certain attributes. Thus
attributes a picture of well-engineered car that is durable, rugged and expensive. If
a car brand does not trigger any attribute, then it would be a weak brand.

Benefits: A strong brand should suggest benefits, not just features. Thus Mercedes
triggers the idea of well performing car that is enjoyable to drive and prestigious to
own.

Company Values: A strong brand should connote values that the company holds.
Thus Mercedes is proud of its engineers and engineering innovations and is very
organized and efficient in its operations. The fact that it is a German company adds
more pictures in the mind of the buyers about the character and the culture of the
brand.

Personality: A strong brand should exhibit some personality traits. Thus if

Mercedes were a person we would think of someone who is middle age, serious,
well-organized and somewhat authoritarian. If Mercedes were an animal we might
think of lion or its implied personality.

Users: A strong brand should suggest the type of people who buy the brand. Thus
we would expect Mercedes to draw buyers who are older, affluent and
professional.
In summary, brands when their very name connotes positive attributes, benefits,
company values, personality and users in the buyer’s mind. The brand builder’s job
is to create a brand identity that builds on those dimensions.
Choosing Brand Elements
Brand elements are those trademarks devices that serve to identify and differentiate
the brand. Most strong brands employ multiple brand elements. DOVE has
distinctive “dove” logo.
Brand element can be chosen to build as much as brand equity as possible. The test
of the brand building ability of these elements is what consumers think or feel
about the product if they only knew about the brand element. A brand element
provides positive contribution to brand equity.

Brand Element Choice Criteria

There are six criteria in choosing brand element. The first three can be
characterized by brand building in terms of how brand equity can be build through
judicious choice of brand element. The latter three are more defensive and are
concerned with how the brand equity contained in the brand element can be
leveraged and preserved in the face of various opportunities and constraints.

Memorable: How easily is the brand element recalled? How easily recognized? Is
this true at both purchase and consumption? Short brand name like tide, Nike can
help.
Meaningful: To what extent is brand element credible and suggestive of the
corresponding category? Does it suggest something about a product ingredient or a
type of person who might use the brand?

Likeability: How aesthetically appealing does consumers find the brand element?
Is it inherently likeable visually, verbally, and in other ways? Concrete brand
names such as Wheel, Sunsilk etc evoke much imagery.
Transferable: Can a brand element be used to introduce new products in the same
or different categories? To what extent does the brand element add to brand equity
across geographic boundaries and market segments?

Adaptable: How adaptable and updatable is the brand element? Betty corker
received 8 makeovers through the years-although she is 75 yrs old, she doesn’t
look a day over 35.

Brand elements can play a number of roles. If consumers do not examine much
information in making their product decisions, brand elements should be easily
recognized and recalled and inherently descriptive and persuasive. Memorable or
meaningful brand elements can reduce the burden on marketing communications to
build awareness and link brand associations. The different associations that arise
from likeability and appeal of the brand elements may also play a critical role in
the equity of brand.

Cartoon help:
“Toon illustrations create excitement, and also serve as a memory hook to pick a
particular brand from clutter”.

Kellogg’s animated kid and bear are intertwined in people’s minds. Nike also used
“swoosh” logo sign to bring immediate recall value, while the Claymation
characters Of Amaron, an O&M creative, pick on sleeping politicians to get their
value across. O&M’s Piyush Pandey says his firm encourages the idea of breaking
form. “Creative people have to look at
different ways to get message across, and if that means exploring other forms of
art, then why not?”
HLL’s Annapoorna uses Flintstone like characters to drive its USP. Industry
officials say animation could be used as creative idea to express a particular value,
or it could be a sacrosanct image, almost becoming part of the logo of the brand –
like A-I am Maharaja or Amul Girl.

First it was retro advertising, and then there was the trend of using real kids. The
ad world’s latest obsession is with animation. Be it Bollywood actress, an animated
poodle talking to Rani Mukherjee and her gang of friends in the Fanta commercial-
they’ve all got the cool punch with animation.

With a string of animated commercials such as Pepsodent (Bhoot Police)

“Animation is no kid stuff anymore. One sees a fair number of youth and adult
targeted content happening in the form of animation in films and TV shows these
days,” says Rahul Welde, general manager, media. Hindustan Unilever Limited.

Mr.Welde claims to have used animation where it could add to the creative
quotient of the commercial which give something unexpected to the audience.

“Gross thinks at time look cute in animation rather than the real thing, say in case
of a fat man. With Claymation (clay + animation), it broke the clutter and became
likeable in a very non-financial advertising style,”
The contribution to the sales of pension schemes of the group rose 30% after the
campaign. The popularity of cartoons among youngsters- a gradual transformation
over the past few years.

“However a real character interacting with an animated character is not a novelty.

It is a style and a lot of people are catching on it but this is not the end of it,” points
Ashish Chakravarty, head creative, Contract Advertising. There are other
viewpoints too. “It’s a nice way of doing a boring script.
Besides the advantage of visual appeal, many complex issues, such as stunts, can
be done away with, with the use of animation- for instance the stunt in

the Lux Commercial couldn’t be done so perfectly by the real character (here
Aishwarya Rai) vis-à-vis the animated character. Animation ad also helps keep
costs down. Industry sources say a simple animation ad is less expensive than an
ad with decent production quality that costs around Rs. 70-80 Lakh. Animated
ones cost around Rs. 30-40 lakh on an average.

However, what creative director’s hate about animation is the fact that it takes a lot
more time “For Amul girl itself, we need to work for three weeks to get it
absolutely right,”says Chauhan JWT.

Branding strategy in rural Market.

Promotion of brands in rural markets requires the special measures. Due to the
social and backward condition the personal selling efforts have a challenging role
to play in this regard. The word of mouth is an important message carrier in rural
areas. Infect the opinion leaders are the most influencing part of promotion strategy
of rural promotion efforts. The experience of agricultural input industry can act as
a guideline for the marketing efforts of consumer durable and non-durable
companies. Relevance of Mass Media is also a very important factor.
The Indian established Industries have the advantages, which MNC don't enjoy in
this regard. The strong Indian brands have strong brand equity, consumer demand-
pull and efficient and dedicated dealer network which have been created over a
period of time. The rural market has a grip of strong country shops, which affect
the sale of various products in rural
market. The companies are trying to trigger growth in rural areas. They are
identifying the fact that rural people are now in the better position with disposable
income. The low rate finance availability has also increased the affordability of
purchasing the costly products by the rural people. Marketer should understand the
price sensitivity of a consumer in a rural area. This paper is therefore an attempt to
promote the brand image in the rural market. 
Indian Marketers on rural marketing have two understanding (I) The urban metro
products and marketing products can be implemented in rural markets with some
or no change. (ii) The rural marketing required the separate skills and techniques
from its urban counter part. The Marketers have following facilities to make them
believe in accepting the truth that rural markets are different in so many terms.

(i) The rural market has the opportunity for.

(ii)  Low priced products can be more successful in rural markets because the low
purchasing, purchasing powers in rural markets.

(iii)  Rural consumers have mostly homogeneous group with similar needs,
economic conditions and problems.

(iv) The rural markets can be worked with the different media environment as
opposed to press, film, radio and other urban centric media exposure.

How reality does affects the planning of marketers? Do villagers have same
attitude like urban consumers? The question arises for the management of rural
marketing effects in a significant manner so than companies can enter in the rural
market with the definite goals and targets but not for a short term period but for
longer duration. The Research paper will discuss the role of regard. The strategy,
which will be presented in the paper, can be either specific or universally
applicable.

Project Shakti

Empowering womenfolk through a wired network for linkage activities or

connecting the rural with urban world is the new mantra adopted by many FMCGs
to sell their products as well as improve the lot of rural women. Indeed, a win-win
partnership for both womenfolk and the company.
This has been made possible due to the initiatives taken up by Hindustan Lever
Ltd (HLL) for an exclusive project called Shakti through which women in a remote
village can access happenings around the world.
As part of this commitment, HLL is leveraging on Self-Help Groups (SHGs) as
they become direct-to-home (DTH) dealers in line with other micro credit models

To be implemented initially as a pilot project in the Nalgonda district of Andhra

Pradesh, Shakti is expected to spread its roots across all the districts of Andhra
Pradesh. It will be integrated with its Project Shakti programme, which is a linkage
of women SHGs with private sector companies.
There are about 300 Shakti dealers in the state with about 40 dealers in Nalgonda.
Working on a cluster approach, the Shakti programme operates through Shakti
dealers who market HLL products and use their services for stocking their produce.
Besides health education, there is also an option of ‘e-learning’ to prepare home
foods like pickles and curry powders among other things. i-Shakti will also help
women to know about crop protection, weather forecasting, soil conditions,
cropping patterns in different weather besides integrated pest management
practice.The whole operation is primarily through SHGs who act as direct dealers
in the rural markets of HLL. The Project Shakti programme is facilitated by the
District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) of Nalgonda district.
From the time HLL's new distribution model, named Project Shakti, was piloted in
Nalgonda district in 2001, it has been scaled up and extended to over 5,000
villages in 52 districts in AP, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh with around
1,000 women entrepreneurs in its fold. The vision is ambitious: to create by 2010
about 11,000 Shakti entrepreneurs covering one lakh villages and touching the
lives of 100 million rural consumers.

Realities before the Marketers

70% of India's population lives in 627000 villages in rural areas. 90% of the rural
population us concentrated in villages with a population of less than

2000, with agriculture being the main business. This simply shows the great
potentiality rural India has to bring the much - needed volume- driven growth. This
brings a boon in disguise for the FMCG Company who has already reached the
plateau of their business urban India.
As per the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study,
there are as many 'middle income and above' households in the rural areas as there
are in the urban areas. There are almost twice as many' lower middle income'
households in rural areas as in the urban areas. At the highest income level there
are 2.3 million urban households as against.

million households in rural areas.  According to the NCAER projections, the

number of middle and high-income households in rural India is expected to grow
from 80 million to 111 million by 2007. In urban India, the same is expected to
grow from 46 million to 59 million. Thus, the absolute size India is expected to be
doubles that of urban India.
HLL chairman MS Banga Says, "This exercise may not pay in the immediate
future, but will definitely give long-term dividends. Incidentally, over 50 percent
of the sales of HLL's fabric wash, personal wash and beverages are in rural areas.
And we see a future in going rural in a major way".
The improved agricultural growth is expected to boost rural demand, through not at
too sizzling a rate. Moreover, the price drop in personal products, after the recent
excise duty reductions, in also expected to drive
Consumption. "Better agricultural yields will give farmers more spending power,
making the rural markets bullish," says an analyst.
As a result, HLL has planned a rural marketing program that is expected to result
in a marked growth in the consumption of the company's products in the rural
market. HLL will adopt three-pronged marketing strategy- new price points, sizes
and awareness campaigns for its detergents and soaps segment to augment rural
growth.
The Indian established Industries have the advantages, which MNC don't enjoy in
this regard. The strong Indian brands have strong brand equity, consumer demand-
pull and efficient and dedicated dealer network which have been created over a
period of time. The rural market has a grip of strong country shops, which affect
the sale of various products in rural market.

The companies are trying to trigger growth in rural areas. They are identifying the
fact that rural people are now in the better position with disposable income. The
low rate finance availability has also increased the affordability of purchasing the
costly products by the rural people. Marketer should understand the price
sensitivity of a consumer in a rural area. The small sachet packs are the examples
of price sensitivity. Colgate has done this experiment with launching of sachet
packs for rural markets.

Lifebuoy
When we talk about HLL the first name that comes to our mind is Lifebuoy.
It is the world’s largest selling soap and offers a stronger health benefit to the
entire family Launched in the year 1895, Lifebuoy, for over a 100 years, has been
synonymous with health and value. The brick red soap, with its perfume and
popular Lifebuoy jingle have carried the Lifebuoy message of health across the
length and breadth of the country, making it the largest selling soap brand in the
world.

In 2002 Lifebuoy was relaunced, marking a new turning point in its history. The
new mix includes a new formulation and a repositioning of the brand to make it
more relevant to both new and existing consumers.

PROMOTION

Media's strategy for Lifebuoy soap's re-launch:

Lifebuoy contributed 30 per cent to the Hindustan Lever detergent business

turnover and hadn't undergone a major restructuring and repositioning in 107
years. However, the sales were declining as the consumers were moving away
from the carbolic based soaps to beauty soaps - perceived to be superior; with
better fragrance and lather; aspirational image.

The agency devised a strategy to ensure that it advocated family health rather than
personal hygiene. There were large chunks of the users who were in "unreachable
areas" - rural markets. Through TV and print campaigns, the agency team focused
attention on the family health themes, conducted consumer education exercise
using "Germ tests" through multimedia; and established the brand's credentials as
an authority in a credible manner. The agency also explored the communication
options during important days such as World Health Day. For rural markets, it
created the Lifebuoy Swashthya Chetana project wherein 450 teams of health
officers tapped 8000 villages in 11 states. Nearly 40 million people.
in rural areas were covered. The brand registered a 30 per cent increase in volumes
and the share of contribution to HLL's detergent division turnover increased to 55
per cent.

HLL was also offering cross company product mixes - a 200 gm Bru packet comes
with one Cadbury's Dairy Milk; Red Label tea packet comes with Cadbury's Five
Star depending on the size; 100 gm Lifebuoy comes with a small Amrutanjan.

HLL used Mahakumbh mela as an opportunity to change hand-washing and

bathing habits in rural India. "The Mahakumbh” at Allahabad is the biggest mela in
India and, with its focus on `cleansing' is a good fit for the `Lifebuoy for health'
message of the brand". Innovative communication tools were used at the mela to
communicate the importance of health and hygiene. “The company 14 stalls at
various points in the mela grounds. Some hand-carts have also been deployed for
increasing access. The numbers of both was increased based on response. ``The
activity aims to build awareness in the target audience about hygiene and health
through product demonstrations".

People in Mela were asked to put there hands below some special camera where
the7y could see the germs on their hands and were asked to wash their hands with
lifebuoy and then see the difference. These type of promotional activities worked
in these melas.

Cinema van operations

These are typically funded by the Redistribution Stockiest. Cinema Van Operations
have films and audio cassettes with song and dance sequences from popular films,
also comprising advertisements of HLL products.

Operation Harvest
The reach of conventional media and, therefore, awareness of different products in
rural markets is weak. It was also not always feasible for the Redistribution
Stockiest to cover all these markets due to high costs involved. Yet, these markets
are important since growth opportunities are high.

Operation Harvest endeavored to supplement the role of conventional media in

rural India and, in the process, forge relationships and loyalty with rural
consumers. Operation Harvest also involved conducting of product awareness
programmers on vans.

Project Shakti is working for HLL to be a great promotional Project and

work in both terms that is Promotion as well as Distribution with socal
welfare as it gives employment to rual women and increase their income.

Our Priorities and Ideologies

Unilever is committed to supporting sustainability and providing our consumers

around the world with the products they need to look good, feel good and get more
out of life.
Five key priorities provide the foundation for our brand’s campaigns. Read some
examples of how different brands are upholding these principles.
A better future for children
• Our oral care brands Signal and Close-Up encourage children to brush their
teeth day and night for optimal dental health. We also partner the FDI World
Dental Federation, supporting oral health programmes around the world
• Brands such as Omo and Persil have helped parents believe the
unconventional philosophy that Dirt is Good. Children learn through play, and mud
spatters and grass stains can easily be removed with effective laundry products
• Unilever also partners the World Food Programme and launched the
Together for Child Vitality initiative to bring our expertise in nutrition to children
in some of the world’s poorest countries.

A healthier future
• Our Flora/Becel margarine brands have been scientifically proven to help
reduce cholesterol levels
• Vaseline has launched the Vaseline Skin Care Foundation, providing
research into skin conditions and support for people affected by them
• Lifebuoy soap has long had a presence in developing markets around the
world, and its campaign to promote handwashing with soap was celebrated by 200
million people across 53 countries in 2013.

A more confident future

• Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty uses real women instead of models in its
advertising campaigns. The brand has also launched the Dove Self Esteem Fund
which educates and inspires millions of young women
• Our Sunsilk hair care brand has partnered some of the world’s leading hair
specialists to co-create formulas tailored to treat conditions such as hair-fall, frizz,
limp locks and uncontrollable curls
• Close-Up toothpaste provides an affordable oral care solution for consumers
in developing markets, allowing them to take care of their dental health and closer
with confidence.

• We’re aiming to grow our business while reducing our environmental

footprint and working across the supply chain for every brand to do so
• Our Laundry brands, including Surf, Omo, Persil and Comfort, have
launched the Cleaner Planet Plan together, encouraging consumers to change their
laundry habits to reduce water and energy consumption
• Our Lipton tea brand backs sustainable forest management projects in Africa

A better future for farming and farmers

• Many of our brands contain ethically and sustainably sourced ingredients
that are independently certified
• Among these are Lipton tea, which is accredited by the Rainforest Alliance,
and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which includes Fairtrade vanilla and almonds in
various flavours
• Around half our raw materials come from agriculture and forestry, so we’re
working towards making our key crops 100% sustainable.

Principles Of HUL

PRINCIPLE 1: ETHICS, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

BUSINESSES SHOULD CONDUCT AND GOVERN THEMSELVES WITH

ETHICS, TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

CODE OF BUSINESS PRINCIPLES

The Code of Business Principles comprises of thirteen principles covering business
integrity and responsibilities relating to employees, consumers and the
environment. All employees, suppliers, distributors and other third parties who
work with your Company are expected to observe the CoBP.
Compliance with these principles is an essential element in your Company’s
business success. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) through the Management
Committee and Business / Unit Heads is responsible for ensuring that the Code is
understood and implemented throughout the Company. Your Company
periodically cascades the principles embodied under CoBP across the organisation.
Complaints, issues and concerns received under the CoBP framework are duly
dealt with and reviewed by the CoBP Committee(s). During 2015-16, a total of 119
grievances and issues from employees and business partners were reported under
the CoBP framework and the same were investigated and dealt with in accordance
with the CoBP protocols of the Company.
Your Company also has a Whistle Blower Policy which allows employees to bring
to the attention of the Management, promptly and directly, any unethical
behaviour, suspected fraud or irregularity in the Company practices which is not in
line with the CoBP. Your Company has provided dedicated e-mail addresses -
whistleblowing.hul@unilever.com and cobp.hul@unilever.com for reporting such
grievances. Alternatively, employeescan also send written communication to the
Company. Employees are encouraged to raise any concerns by way of whistle
blowing without any fear or threat of being victimised.
The Company Secretary is the designated officer for effective implementation of
the Policy and dealing with the complaints registered under the Policy. All cases
registered under the CoBP and the Whistle Blower Policy of the Company are
reported to the members of the Management Committee and are subject to review
by the Audit Committee.

PRINCIPLE 2: PRODUCTS LIFECYCLE SUSTAINABILITY

BUSINESSES SHOULD PROVIDE GOODS AND SERVICES THAT ARE
SAFE AND CONTRIBUTE TO SUSTAINABILITY THROUGHOUT THEIR
LIFECYCLE

It is important for your Company to manage the impacts of its product lifecycle for
the success of USLP. The lifecycle of a product covers the entire value chain from
sourcing of raw materials, to product manufacture, distribution, consumer use and
disposal.
LIFECYCLE ASSESSMENT
Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is one of the many techniques your Company uses to
understand the impacts of its products on the environment. Your Company uses
LCA in three ways:
1. New product design
When designing new products your Company routinely uses LCA to compare new
and existing products and to measure the differences in their respective
environmental profiles.
2. Existing product assessment
Your Company conducts LCA on the existing products and ingredients to help
identify improvement opportunities, to improve data quality and relevance to the
Company’s studies and also to support external communications.
3. Science and methodological development
Your Company works on an ongoing basis with partners to develop scientific
approaches for LCA. It actively engages in, and promotes the development of new
science to improve both the robustness and scope of lifecycle-based approaches
and assessment.

Useful information from LCAs is then embedded into the brand communication
and used to inform consumers of the social and environmental benefits of the
products. In many ways, LCA is the first step to create socially relevant brands.

SOCIALLY RELEVANT BRANDS

Your Company’s brands are crafted with a purpose to make a positive difference to
the society. These brands not just create consumer value but are the brands that
consumers really value.
Brands such as Lifebuoy, Pureit and Domex have helped to improve health by
promoting better health and hygiene habits. Lifebuoy runs one of the largest
handwashing programmes in India and has scaled up its programmes year on year
with around 65 million people benefiting from it since 2010. Pureit, your
Company’s innovative water purifier, helps prevent disease, ultimately helping to
save lives. It has made purifiers more affordable to low-income consumers.
Your Company’s recent ‘Swachh Aadat, Swachh Bharat’ programme is another
example of how brands can play a role in the societal progress. The programme is
in line with Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission)
to promote good health and hygiene practices. Given the scale of challenges that
India faces in the areas of WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), this programme
is an effort to help India realise the goals of Clean India Mission by 2019. It is a
first-of-its-kind programme synergising the efforts of your Company’s leading
brands Lifebuoy, Domex and Pureit in the area of WASH. This programme
promotes good health and hygiene practice by stressing the need to adopt three
simple good habits (‘Swachh Aadat’) – washing hands five times a day, using a
toilet for defecation and adopting safe drinking water practices.

PRINCIPLE 3: EMPLOYEES’ WELL-BEING

BUSINESSES SHOULD PROMOTE THE WELL-BEING OF ALL
EMPLOYEES

Your Company encourages employees to live healthy and work safely, both at
work and outside it. The aim is to create a working environment supportive of
employees’ personal lives, while meeting your Company’s business needs.
Healthier employees are more motivated and more productive.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELL-BEING:

Your Company aims to prevent work-related illness and occupational diseases as
well as ensure good ergonomics at the workplace.The CEO heads the Central
Safety, Health & Environment Committee, which reviews the health & safety
performance of the Company. Safety performance is monitored through a set of
key performance indicators and reviewed regularly by the Company’s management
committee.
By end of 2015, your Company achieved over 70% reduction in Total Recordable
Frequency Rate (TRFR) compared to 2008 baseline for accidents in the factories
and offices.
This has been achieved through rigorous deployment of Unilever’s global BeSafE
initiatives, implementation of advanced equipment safety standards and adoption
of DuPont Behavioural Safety methodology across the operations.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN :

Your Company owns the first ever all-women run factory in the FMCG industry.
The 100% women employee factory at Haridwar is a testimony to your Company’s
‘diversity’ initiatives which seek to promote gender-balance and accelerate the
advancement of high-potential women talent in the Company. The final
onboarding of the all female team in this factory was done in December 2014.
Prior to that, comprehensive training was completed for the team to ensure smooth
transition. The training included technical classroom sessions by an external ITI
(Industrial Training Institute) professor and four weeks of on-the-job training to
ensure business continuity. The ‘all women team’ delivered success in the first
quarter of taking over operations.
In addition, your Company has a well-defined agile working policy which includes
work from home, flexi-timing and hot desking. The thrust is to build an agile and
inclusive organization that celebrates differences and leverages the diversity.

FAIR LABOUR PRACTICES :

Your Company has an excellent record on industrial relations and since 2015 has
maintained a record of zero loss of man days due to industrial unrest. Your
Company currently has around 3,800 employees who are employed on
contractual / temporary basis.

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION, PARTICIPATION AND COLLECTIVE

BARGAINING :
The rights of workers to freedom of association and collective bargaining are
recognised and respected. Workers are not intimidated or harassed in the exercise
of their right to join or refrain from joining any organisation.
There are 105 employee associations in the Company. Nearly 11,000 permanent
employees are members of these associations. During the last year, your Company
entered into long term settlements with around 850 employees covering eight
factories / branches across India.
There are over 122 permanent female blue-collar employees and over 21
permanent blue-collar employees with disabilities in your Company’s factories.

PRINCIPLE 4: STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

BUSINESSES SHOULD RESPECT THE INTERESTS OF, AND BE
RESPONSIVE TOWARDS ALL STAKEHOLDERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE
WHO ARE DISADVANTAGED, VULNERABLE AND MARGINALISED.
Stakeholder engagement helps your Company in decision making, in delivering
USLP commitments, in strengthening relationships and succeeding in the business.
Your Company actively engages with governments, inter-governmental
organisations, regulators, customers, suppliers, investors, civil society
organizations and the consumers to create an environment that is supportive of
solutions.

CONSUMERS:
As the country’s leading consumer goods company, your Company constantly
seeks to understand what motivates the consumers, how to inform them and how to
engage with them.
• Winning In Many India’s:
Your Company undertook the ambitious transformation agenda of ‘Winning In
Many India’s’ (WIMI) to leverage the diversity of people, culture, habits,
economics and demographics that exists across India. 2015 has been a year of
strengthening the WIMI thinking across markets, embedding it into your
Company’s daily ways of working. This helped the Company to move the needle
on quality of servicing and in-market execution by getting closer to the customers,
shoppers and consumers. This approach has strengthened your Company’s connect
with customers, consumers and shoppers across geographical clusters, and will be
a source of continuing competitive advantage.

• Social Initiatives:
The Sales and Marketing teams continued the journey of executing the mass
contact programme. Through this programme, your Company reached more than
2.5 million rural consumers and contacted 0.8 million school children, driving the
message of health and hygiene through the Lifebuoy handwashing programme.
This has become a key part of the Company’s effort on supporting the Swachh
Bharat Initiative. This programme is now active in over 8,000 villages across the
country.
CUSTOMERS
Your Company has undertaken some important initiatives like establishing call
centres, creating joint business plans etc during the year to become more customer
centric and win in the marketplace. Read details on this in Principle 9 (Customer
Value).

SHAREHOLDERS AND INVESTORS

It has been your Company’s constant endeavour to provide best of the services to
its valuable shareholders and maintain highest level of corporate governance in the
Company. In order to improve and constantly meet higher service standards your
Company regularly interacts with its shareholders and investors through results
announcements, annual report, media releases, Company’s website and subject
specific communications.
The Annual General Meeting of shareholders is an important annual event where
the shareholders of the Company come in direct communication with the Board of
Directors and the management. The Board engages with shareholders and answers
their queries on varied subjects.
Your Company’s Investor Service Department regularly engages with the
shareholders to resolve queries, grievance, if any, and provide guidance for shares /
shareholder related matters. Your Company has a designated e-mail id for
shareholders.
Your Company has continued to maintain high standards on Investor Relations and
has been recognized on various counts. In 2015, the HUL Investor Relations Team
was recognised by the sell side analysts to be amongst the Top 3 in the ‘Best IR
Team’ and ‘Best Analyst Day’ Rankings across Asia in the Consumer Sector, as
published by ‘Institutional Investor, New York’. Your Company has been
recognised for its IR practices at various other forums over the years.

GOVERNMENT
All interactions with the Government, legislators and regulators are done by duly
authorised and appropriately trained individuals with honesty, integrity, openness
and in compliance with local laws and in accordance with the CoBP and Policy.
The Investor Relations team also interacts regularly with investors and analysts,
through quarterly results calls, one-on-one and group meetings, participation at
investor conferences and the annual investors meet.
NGOs
Your Company engages with a number of NGOs through Hindustan Unilever
Foundation (HUF). The water conservation programme undertaken through
collective action and in partnership with several NGOs, communities, other co-
funders and partners across India has created cumulative and collective potential of
200 billion litres.

MEDIA
Your Company engages with media to keep its stakeholders updated about the
developments in the Company. Regular interactions with the electronic, print,
television and online media take place through press releases, media events and
during the financial results announcements.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Your Company has several communication processes instituted to ensure a two-
way communication channel with the employees. These include:
• CEO Report back: Quarterly performance update from the CEO to all employees.
• Annual Review: All managers are invited to the Annual Review which is
conducted in four major metros.
• Others: The Company has other in-house communication channels, which help
employees to connect, bond, inspire, express and celebrate their achievements.

PRINCIPLE 5: ENVIRONMENT
BUSINESS SHOULD RESPECT, PROTECT AND MAKE EFFORTS TO
RESTORE THE ENVIRONMENT
By 2020 your Company’s goal is to halve the environmental footprint of the
making and use of its products while growing its business.
It makes business sense to reduce the business risk by securing sustainable sources
of supply for raw materials, to cut costs through reducing packaging materials and
higher manufacturing efficiencies, and to appeal to more consumers with
sustainable brands.
• in manufacturing, per tonne of production in India - against the baseline of 2008,
your Company achieved 42% reduction in CO2 emissions, 48% reduction in water
usage and 92% reduction in disposed waste generation.
• Your Company created 200 billion litres of water conservation potential through
Hindustan Unilever Foundation (HUF) partnerships.
• 398 tea estates were certified as sustainable estates by Rainforest Alliance and
trustea in India.
• 100% tomatoes used in Kissan Ketchup were sourced from sustainable sources.

MONITORING PROGRESS
The progress on sustainability is monitored at different levels as mentioned below:
• Sustainability Governing Council: The top leadership from respective business
verticals and functions constitute the Governing Council. The Company has a
governance mechanism and score card to monitor the progress on USLP
commitments. The Council reports the progress to the Management Committee and
CEO on a quarterly basis
• Environment Sub-Committee: This is led by the Executive Director, Supply
Chain, and has members from various departments like Safety and Environment,
Finance, Engineering, R&D and Legal. The team engages every two months to
review environment performance and define the implementation strategy.

RISK ASSESSMENT
All the emissions / waste generated by your Company are generally within the
permissible limits given by respective state PCB (Pollution Control Board).
The Pond’s HLL ex-Mercury Employees Welfare Association, representing the ex-
employees of the former thermometer factory at Kodaikanal, had filed a petition in
the Hon’ble Madras High Court in February 2006 seeking economic rehabilitation.
This petition was filed more than four years after your Company had made a full
and final settlement with the ex-employees in November 2001. The severance
package offered to the ex-employees at the relevant time was significantly higher
than the statutory requirement. The ex-employees were also offered alternative
jobs in another unit of the Company, however, they opted out of service. Several
expert studies have been conducted since the factory’s closure and all have
concluded that our ex-employees were not harmed by working in the former
thermometer factory at Kodaikanal.
Following the settlement with former workers in Kodaikanal, your Company
continues to actively engage with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board
(TNPCB) on the issue relating to soil remediation and is committed to address the
clean-up of the former thermometer factory site.

PRINCIPLE 6: CUSTOMER VALUE

BUSINESS SHOULD ENGAGE WITH AND PROVIDE VALUE TO THEIR
CUSTOMERS AND CONSUMERS IN A RESPONSIBLE MANNER
Your Company’s business partners and suppliers are extremely important for the
Company’s operations. They ensure that the Company units are able to
manufacture, market and continuously improve the products it sells every day.
Your Company’s strong distribution network comprises millions of outlets
serviced by over 2,500 stockists and associates who helped deliver Company’s
products.
Your Company has undertaken some important initiatives to become more
customer centric and win in the marketplace. These initiatives include:
• Call centres:
Establishing dedicated call centres for distributors as well as retailers to reach out
to the Company. The call centres set up for retailers have helped many of your
Company’s traditional trade customers reach out directly to the Company. Your
Company receives more than 3,000 calls every month from distributors and
retailers. The calls received from retail outlets provide useful insights and help the
Company understand issues and opportunities in the marketplace better and
address them effectively.
• Partner of choice:
Your Company saw strong growth across all key modern trade retail partners,
driven by strong joint business plans. The e-commerce opportunity is evident, and
growing exponentially in India. Your Company has made significant investment in
capability building in e-commerce, and is committed to being the best FMCG
player in e-commerce. A strong, high quality team with diverse talent has been put
in place and they are working closely with all key e-commerce partners to create
competitive advantage for the business.

RESPONSIBLE MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION

Your Company constantly tries to provide value to its customers and engage with
its consumers in a responsible way. One way it ensures responsible communication
to its consumers is by clearly defining marketing and communication guidelines to
all forms of advertising.
Your Company is aware that its marketing and advertising can influence consumer
choices. So it is important to advertise and market the products responsibly. There
are clearly defined marketing and communication principles which provide
guidance to the brand managers. Your
Company’s commitment applies to all forms of advertising and marketing,
including but not limited to TV, radio, print advertising, internet (third-party and
company-owned websites), social media, apps, online games, direct marketing,
product packaging, labeling, point of sale materials and all other forms of
communication. Your Company ensures that all the claims made in advertising are
backed by sound scientific substantiation and that all such communication passes
the test of being ‘legal, decent and honest’.
Your Company has four clearly defined principles that guide its communications
with consumers:
• Your Company is committed to building trust through responsible practices and
through transparent communication – both directly to consumers and indirectly
through other key stakeholders and thought-leaders.
• It is your Company’s responsibility to ensure that its products are safe and that
the Company provides clear information on their use and any risks that are
associated with their use.
• Your Company fully supports a consumer’s right to know what is in the products
and is transparent in terms of ingredients, nutrition values and the health and
beauty properties of its products.
• Your Company uses a combination of channels, which includes product labels,
websites, care-line phone numbers and/or consumer leaflets to communicate
openly with its consumers.

LABELS AND PACK INFORMATION

All Company products comply with the applicable regulations such as the Drugs
and Cosmetics Act, Legal Metrology Act, Bureau of Indian Standards
Specifications, Trademark Act and Copyright Act, Food Safety and Standards Act,
Tea Act, Tea Board Regulations, for Labels and Pack Information. The food and
beverage products also carry a nutritional information table on the back of pack in
compliance with local legislation. Your Company has initiated Guideline Daily
Amount (GDA) labelling on its packs in 2014, where applicable and legally
allowed in accordance with industry agreements.
In addition to national laws and self-regulatory codes in India, your Company also
applies Unilever’s principles to the marketing and advertising for all the food and
beverage products directed at children. These principles require that marketing
practices:
• do not convey misleading messages
• do not undermine parental influence. Advertisements always show parents as
gatekeepers to the product being consumed
• do not encourage pester power
• do not suggest time or price pressure
• do not encourage unhealthy dietary habits
• do not blur the boundary between promotion and content.
Your Company does not advertise food and beverage products to children under 12
years and does not make communication related to food and beverage products in
primary schools, except for products which fulfill specific nutrition criteria that are
based on accepted scientific evidence and/or applicable under national and
international dietary guidelines.

Corporate Social Responsibility Policy

HUL is committed to operate and grow its business in a socially responsible way.
Our vision is to grow our business whilst reducing the environmental impact of our
operations and increasing our positive social impact.
This policy outlines our Corporate Social Responsibility agenda. Our aim is to
achieve responsible growth and we will inspire to bring this to life by encouraging
people to take small everyday actions that will add up to make a big difference.
We have embraced Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) which contributes to
activities listed in the Schedule VII of Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.
The USLP has three global goals namely help more than a billion people take
action to improve their health and wellbeing, reduce the environmental footprint of
our products and enhance the livelihoods of people as we grow our business.
Additionally, considering India as a water scarce region and the water availability
is expected to go down further, HUL has identified water as a key area of
intervention. We will focus in this area by creating capacities in conserving water
through significant investments in partnership with relevant stakeholders with the
objective of water conservation.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Principles:

HUL’s CSR Policy is supported by the following principles:
We are committed to conducting our operations with integrity and respect, in the
interest of our stakeholders, and in line with our Code of Business Principles.
We believe growth and environmental sustainability need not be conflicting. Our
business model is designed to deliver sustainable growth. The inputs to the model
are our brands, our people and our operations. The outputs to the model are
sustained growth, lower environmental impact and positive social impact. The
differentiator in our business model is our USLP and the goal of sustainable living.
We collaborate and engage with different stakeholders including Governments,
NGOs, IGOs, Suppliers, Farmers, and Distributors to tackle the challenges faced
by the society.
In accordance with Section 135(5) of the Companies Act, 2013 (the Act), HUL is
committed to spend at least 2% of its average net profits made during the three
immediately preceding financial years in some of the identified activities that are
listed in Schedule VII (as amended) to the Act. This will include the spends
through activities undertaken by Hindustan Unilever Foundation (HUF), our not
for profit subsidiary Company, aimed at building capacities to conserve water and
to further community development initiatives.

Governance mechanism:
We follow structured governance procedures to monitor CSR activities. Our CSR
Policy is governed by the Board of Directors of the Company. The Board has
constituted a CSR Committee comprising of an Independent Chair and a majority
of Independent Directors to monitor the Policy and the programmes from time to
time.
The activities described in Annexure A appended hereto are covered under
Schedule VII (as amended) of the Act that lists down permitted activities that
constitute such activities. These activities undertaken by the Company are not
expected to lead to any additional surplus beyond what would accrue to the
Company in the course of normal operations.
The Policy issued pursuant to the Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Rules,
2013 has been recommended by the CSR Committee of the Board and adopted by
the Board of Directors.

CASE STUDY
Forty-two-year-old Sudharkar Sahoo is a farmer in Sarapari village in Orissa’s
Khurda district. Till a few months back, he used to till land for a part of the day
and had nothing to do for the rest. Financially, Sudharkar’s family of four was not
overstretched considering that his wife, Suprabha too earned an income. Being a
‘shakti amma’, Suprabha was an entrepreneur distributing consumer products for
multinational giant Hindustan Unilever (HUL). Now, Sudharkar’s family income is
about to more than double as he has been picked up for a specific task by the
maker of Lux soap and Wheel detergent. The company is utilizing the skills of the
likes of Sudharkar to distribute its products in remote villages which have a
demand for such products, but don’t have a distribution network.
Sudharkar must be happy that the hike in income will take his family closer to the
comfort zone. What he may not be aware of is the importance of the role he is
about to play in a mission that is going to triple HUL’s rural reach in a year’s time.
He is among the first lot of ‘shaktimaans’ who have been roped in by HUL to
fulfill its ambition of reaching villages with population of less than 2,000 and are
beyond the reach of the company’s redistribution stockists (RS). Every day,
Sudharkar sets out on a bicycle which has been provided by HUL for him to
commute to villages to distribute products and sachets of popular brands like
Wheel, Lifebuoy, Pond’s, Brooke Bond, among others, to aspiring consumers.
Earlier, these consumers had to satisfy their needs by purchasing products from
nearby villages where the company has direct distribution. Now, their needs will
be met in their own villages by the visiting Shaktimaans.
EMERGING PERSPECTIVES:
The above case study reveals significant emerging perspectives for a renewed CSR
as follow:
• The company can reach out rural poor with the help of the project.
• It can try to market any product in rural areas since the trust of the consumers
have already developed.
• Maximization of sale and profitability can be targeted very easily.
• Since rural consumers are also adapting to changes, introduction of a new product
becomes very easy.
• The customer base can be improved without much effort.
• Social capital can be created while serving the bottom of pyramid.
• The reputation of the company also gets elevated
3. LIFEBUOY SWASTYA CHETNA
The Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna programme was initiated in 2002 as a rural health
and hygiene initiative in India. In India, over 600,000 children under the age of
five die annually from diarrhoea.
Studies have shown that almost half these deaths could have been prevented by
simply washinghands with soap.
In partnership with local government bodies, the Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna
programme is designed to spread awareness about the importance of washing
hands with soap.
It also promotes general hygiene in rural areas that are difficult to reach through
usual marketing campaigns such as television, press or in-store advertising and
promotions. Communication
Swasthya Chetna, which means 'Health Awakening', is a multi-phased activity that
works towards effecting hand washing behavior change in rural communities. The
main message of the campaign is "Visibly clean is not really clean".

The campaign has three communication tasks:

• To establish the presence of germs, even on clean hands, through the use of
a 'glow germ demo kit' that has been developed by Unilever for use in Lifebuoy
Swasthya Chetna. The simple and powerful tool makes unseen germs visible.

• To establish the consequences of these hidden germs, which when ingested,

can cause stomach infections and diarrhoea, or be transferred to eyes causing
painful eye infections, or infecting wounds.

• To establish how current practice is not enough to fight these germs by using
the glow germ demo kit to demonstrate that washing with water is not enough, and
that it is necessary to wash hands with soap for germ protection.
Tools used to communicate the central Swasthya Chetna message are adapted
according to the specific audience. Engagement Lifebuoy teams visit each village
several times, engaging all segments of the community and ensuring the formation
of local 'self-help communities' that can sustain the message. School children,
being initiators of change, make excellent ambassadors of communication,
provided they find it fun and engaging. The element of Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna
that involves children focuses on fun, using stories, games, songs and quizzes.
Efforts are made to ensure that the learning does not fade over time. Additionally,
these visits also include a meeting with the Panchayat (village elders).
Covering 130 million people in 30,000 villages since 2002, the Lifebuoy Swasthya
Chetna programme has made its mark as the single largest private hygiene
education project in the world. The Swasthya Chetna programme will be re-
launched in 2009, and will cover even more villages in India as part of the
Lifebuoy brand's crusade.

Key project activities:

Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna is a multiphase activity that works toward effecting

handwashing behavior change among the rural communities it touches.

The central message of the campaign is:

Visibly clean is not really clean.
The communication tasks were to:

Establish the presence of germs even on clean-looking hands, using a simple but
extremely powerful, low-cost demonstration tool called the “glow germ demo kit.”
Developed by Unilever for use in Swasthya Chetna, it brings to the target audience
the idea that hands are only truly clean if washed with soap.Establish the
consequences of these hidden germs on hands.

Background
The Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetna (“Health Awakening”) program began in 2002 as a
rural health and hygiene education initiative in India. The project was designed to
spread awareness about the importance of washing hands with soap and to promote
general hygiene in rural villages. The program has reached more than 100 million
people, and its teams have reached at least 44,000 villages in rural India. Swasthya
Chetna is one of the world’s largest self-sustained and self-funded hygiene
promotion projects.
Communicating the message to children:
School children are change initiators and, in this context, the program works with
them to take the messages home and into their communities. Children are also
excellent communicators if they find the topic or activity fun and involving. The
tools to communicate the central Swasthya Chetna message are adapted according
to the specific audience, and schools have proven excellent entry points into
communities. The element of Swasthya Chetna that involves children focuses on
how to position hygiene as fun and uses stories, games, songs and quizzes.
Key factors to success of the program:
Continuous monitoring and evaluation is at the core of the program – each year,
program activities are evaluated on both awareness of hygiene moments and
effective behavior changes. Improvements can be made to the subsequent year’s
program to make it more effective in achieving its goals.
Cost-effectiveness of the program – the cost per village is approximately £50 for
the three exposures, including implementation and development of the materials.
Commitment of the operating company – Swasthya Chetna is now central to what
the brand does in India, and the operating company (Hindustan Unilever Limited)
has invested more than US$5 million.
Unilever Values
Unilever’s mission is to add vitality to life. We meet every day needs for nutrition,
hygiene, and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and
get more out of life. As a multi-local multinational, Unilever aims to play its part in
addressing global environmental and social concerns through its own actions, and
working in partnership with stakeholders at local, national and international levels.
On April 7, 2006, on the occasion of World Health Day, the Department of Posts
released a special Lifebuoy 'Swasthya Chetna Postal Cover'. Lifebuoy, a leading
soap brand from Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), the Indian subsidiary of
Unilever, became India's first brand to be featured on a postal cover. The Special
Postal Cover was released in recognition of the work done by Lifebuoy and HLL
to increase awareness of health and hygiene in rural India, through the Lifebuoy
'Swasthya Chetna' (LSC) initiative.
LSC was a five-year campaign launched in 2002 in eight states across India. The
objective of this program was to educate around 200 million people in rural and
urban areas about the importance of adopting good 'health and hygiene' practices.
The program aimed to debunk the misconception that 'visibly clean is safe clean'.

HLL's senior product manager for Lifebuoy, Harpreet Singh Tibb (Tibb) said,
"People believe that 'visible clean' is 'safe' clean and hence tend to overlook simple
hygiene practices such as washing hands with soap. But the fact is that there are
invisible pathogens, which are responsible for many infectious diseases. We hence
aim to educate people on the presence of invisible germs and raise concern on their
consequences."

LSC also spread awareness about germs and their adverse impact on health, and
how proper 'health and hygiene' practices, such as bathing and washing hands with
soap could prevent diseases like diarrhea, the second largest cause of death among
children in India. The LSC program was implemented in various phases. In the
initial phase, the company representatives interacted with schoolchildren and key
influencers in the community like medical practitioners, Panchayat members, etc.
People were educated through lectures, Glo-germ demonstrations, use of visual
aids such as flip charts, and quizzes.

The program also used media vehicles like cinema vans, wall paintings, weekly
markets, fairs and festivals. The program was later extended to the parents and
other adults. The messages on health and hygiene were reinforced through regular
contact programs. HLL also introduced a smaller bar (18 gram) of Lifebuoy soap
priced at two rupees, to encourage people with low incomes to use soap.

Finally, children and parents were recruited as volunteers to start health clubs that
would help sustain the initiative. HLL sought to involve the local community in
this campaign at all stages so that the beneficiaries saw this as their own initiative
and felt a sense of ownership. On the whole, HLL had committed US$ 5.4 million
to fund this five year campaign. By the end of 2005, HLL had covered over 17,000
villages, and planned to cover an additional 10,000 villages in 2006.

According to HLL, LSC was not a philanthropic activity, but a marketing program
with asocial benefit. HLL sought to grow the Lifebuoy brand in India by attracting
those consumers who never used soap. In the process, the company sought to bring
about a behavioral change by convincing people to use soaps more frequently, thus
creating more users for its brand. The sales of Lifebuoy had increased by 20
percent in 2003-04, with strong sales observed in the eight states covered under the
program.
In 2005, the Lifebuoy brand grew by 10 percent and sturdy growth of the brand
was expected to continue in 2006. The program also generated goodwill for the
company among customers, the government, and the media.
By the end of 2005, the campaign had touched 86 million rural consumers and
registered a 30 percent increase in their awareness of germs, 20 percent increase in
understanding the association of germs with diseases and an increase in current
user base by 33 percent compared to pre-campaign status in activity villages.
4. Happy homes -special education & rehabilitation
Under the Happy Homes initiative, HUL supports special education and
rehabilitation of children with challenges.
Asha Daan: Home in Mumbai for abandoned The initiative began in 1976, when
HUL supported Mother Teresa and the Missonaries of Charity to set up Asha
Daan, a home in Mumbai for abandoned, challenged children, the HIV-positive
and the destitute. At any point of time, about 370 inmates comprising of boys,
girls, men and women are housed at the Home. Food, clothing and medicines
required by inmates are taken care of by the donations received from the locals of
Mumbai city. The needs of the abandoned/challenged children are met through
special classes of basic skills, physiotherapy, etc. being taken care of by the Sisters
of the Home. Wherever necessary, corrective surgery is also arranged f11or in the
city hospitals by the Home. Until November 2008, 15,933 individuals were
benefited from Ashadaan.
Ankur: Special education of challenged children In 1993, HUL's Doom Dooma
Tea Plantation Division set up Ankur, a centre for special education of challenged
children. Since 2006, HUL Personal Products Factory, Doom Dooma took over the
reign from the Tea Divisions. The centre takes care of children with challenges,
aged between 5 and 15 years. Ankur provides educational, vocational and
recreational activities to over 50 children with a range of challenges. Since
inception it has covered more than 80 children. Ankur received the Lawrie Group’s
World aware Award for Social Progress in 1999 from Her Royal Highness in
London.
Kappagam: Shelter for challenged children Encouraged by Ankur's success,
Kappagam ("shelter"), the second centre for special education of challenged
children, was set up in 1998 on HUL Plantations in South India. The focus of
Kappagam is the same as that of Ankur. The centre has 17 children, who are taught
self-help skills and useful vocational activities. So far it covers about 28 children.
Anbagam: Day care centre Yet another day care centre, Anbagam ("shelter of
love"), has been started in 2003 also in the South India Plantations. It takes care of
11 children. Besides medical care and meals, they too are being taught skills such
that they can become self-reliant and elementary studies. Over 16,000 individuals
have benefited from the Happy Homes initiatives since inception.
5. Fair & Lovely (FAL) Foundation - Women’s Empowerment About the Fair &
Lovely Foundation

The Fair and Lovely Foundation is a non-profit foundation set up under the aegis
of the Hindustan Lever Educational and Welfare Trust. This foundation seeks to
encourage economic empowerment of Indian women through information and
resources in the areas of education, career and enterprise. Comprising an advisory
body of leading individuals, this foundation will undertake various projects and
initiatives in keeping with its vision of taking women to a brighter future.
Hindustan Lever Limited announced the launch of the Fair & Lovely Foundation,
an initiative whose mission is to encourage economic empowerment of women
across India through information and resources in the areas of education, career
and enterprise.
The advisors to the Foundation are Dr Snehalata Deshmukh, Ex-Vice Chancellor,
Mumbai University; Dr Malika Sarabhai, Director- Darpana Academy and Dr
Rekha Sheth, President, Cosmetologist Society of India. The Foundation has
already launched programmes in the areas of careers and enterprise with partners
like Andhra Pradesh Government and Dr Reddy's Foundation amongst others.
The series of projects that have been drawn up to achieve the vision include the
following:
Careers:
Project Disha aims at providing career guidance by organising career fairs in over
20 cities across the country, offering counselling in as many as 110 careers. So far,
over 45,000 students have benefited from these career fairs.
Project Jagruti aims at providing guidance to women in Gujarat through innovative
live television broadcast and interactive learning sessions.

Education:
Project Saraswati aims to provide women with scholarships for education such that
it opens career avenues for them. There will be 100 rural scholarships for women
students passing their 10th grade, given across 5 districts with the lowest HDI
(Human Development Index) in select States.
In the urban phase of this project, the Foundation will give 20 scholarships for
postgraduate studies.offers scholarships to deserving women in rural & urban
India.
Enterprise:
Project Sanjeevani is a three month Home Healthcare Nursing Assistant's Course
in partnership with Dr. Reddy's Foundation. It will cater to young women between
the ages 18 and 30 who have formal educational backgrounds ranging from the 8th
grade to intermediate levels. The programme will run under the aegis of The Fair
and Lovely Academy for Home Care Nursing Assistants and will provide a unique
training opportunity for young women who possess no entry level skills and,
therefore, are not employable in the new economy job market.
Project Kaladarshan is a pioneering effort towards skill development in the areas of
embroidery and garment designing for the DWCRA Self Help Groups of Andhra
Pradesh. This is being done in collaboration with the Commissionerate of Women
Empowerment & Self Employment and Employment Generation Mission,
Government of Andhra Pradesh.
Project Sneha is a unique initiative that attempts to provide young women, who
have been unable to complete formal education, with the opportunity to obtain
training in various aspects of home care. This training will equip them with the
requisite skills to gain employment in households and thus provide them with
economic independence.
Project Saundarya in association with CSI (Cosmetology Society of India), is a
first of its kind professional course for aspiring beauticians.
Speaking at the launch, Sangeeta Pendurkar, Marketing Manager, Skincare -
Hindustan Lever Limited, said, "Fair & Lovely Foundation will serve as a catalyst
for the economic empowerment for women across India. We believe that there are
lakhs and lakhs of women, who though immensely talented and capable, need a
guiding hand to help them take the leap forward. At the same time, achievers need
to be acknowledged, to further boost their confidence and help serve as role
models for countless others. Through the Fair & Lovely Foundation we want to
make a difference to the lives of women by providing guidance and recognition;
thereby helping them achieve their potential."
Pendurkar further added, "Our association with leading women and organisations
who have done credible work in the area of economic empowerment of women
will help us achieve this objective. We will continue to identify and work on
several such initiatives that will help us ignite this spark in other women and make
a difference to their lives."
Said Dr Malika Sarabhai, "Speaking on behalf of all members on this foundation,
we are very happy and proud to join hands with the Fair &Lovely Foundation. The
projects this foundation has already committed itself to are definitely steps in the
right direction and we look forward to identifying and working on many more such
intitiatives. In the long run we are confident that the Fair and Lovely Foundation
will make a difference to the lives of many women."

SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT analysis is a tool that originated in the business world (Learned et al., 1969)
but is useful for any kind of strategic planning. It's a relatively quick way to look at
your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Although it is not a
substitute for an in-depth analysis, it can set the stage for one.
STRENTH:
HUL enjoys a formidable distribution network covering over 3400 distributors and
16 million outlets. This helps them maintain heavy volumes, and hence, fill the
shelves of most outlets. The new sales organization named 'One HUL' brings
"Household and Personal Care" and foods distribution networks together, thereby
aligning all the units towards the common goal of achieving success. HUL has
been continuously able to grow at a rate more than growth rate for FMCG Sector,
thereby reaffirming its future stronghold in Indian market.
Project Shakti - Rural India is spread across 627,000 villages and possesses a
serious distribution challenge for FMCG Cos. HUL has come up with a unique and
successful initiative wherein the women from the rural sector market HUL
products, and hence, are able to reach the same wavelength as of the common man
in village. Apart from product reach, the initiative also creates brand awareness
amongst the lower strata of society. This has brought about phenomenal results.

WEAKNESS :
HUL's market dominance, originating from its extensive reach and strong brand
presence, allowed it to raise the prices even as raw materials were getting cheaper.
Hence, though the volumes decreased, the margins grew, and company was able to
earn more profits. But higher margins attracted competition in areas of operations.
HUL's strategy remained focused on creating power brands and earning higher
margins. It was not left with any other option but to try cutting down the costs in
order to protect volumes, if not increase it.
The key differentiators for an FMCG player are ability to call shots and pricing
power, and HUL has shown weakness over both these factors.
HUL's weakness was its inability to transform its strategies at the right time. They
continued with the same old strategy which helped them gain profits but was not
genuine in this changed environment. HUL's risk aversion and market myopia led
to stagnation of business, and ferocity of competition forced it into a defensive
mode. Lack of pricing power in core business and absence of growth drivers have
put HUL on a deflationary mode.

OPPORTUNITIES :
India is one of the world's largest producers of FMCG goods but its exports are
miniscule as compared to production. Though Indian Cos. have been going global,
their focus is more towards Asian countries because of the similar preferences.
HUL is one of the top companies exporting FMCG goods from India. An
expansion of horizons towards more and more countries would help HUL grow its
consumer base and henceforth the revenues.
Opportunity in Food Sector - The advent of modern trade has opened up greater
opportunities for HUL to diversify its brand and strength its food division. It could
look at introducing products from its parents stable like margarines and could also
look at expanding its Knorr range of products.
It's well-placed to take advantage of future FMCG Growth - HUL reach out 80%
of 207 million households in the country through various brands. It has a very
well-defined product portfolio spread across many product categories
Penetration levels for some major categories like skin-cream (22%), shampoo
(38%), toothpaste (48%) and processed foods, continue to remain low offerings but
great growth opportunities products.

THREATS:
ITC has reduced its dependence on the cigarettes business - Contribution of the
core business in revenues has come down from 87% in FY99 to 70% in FY05.
Over a period of five years, ITC has extended its presence into areas like foods,
retailing, hotels, greetings, agri, paper, etc. These are businesses that can give it
growth impetus in the long run. With ITC gaining momentum in each of these
businesses, it is turning into a consumer monolith, and hence, the greatest threat to
HUL's Business.
SSKI India has gone on to say, "We maintain Out performer on ITC with a price
target of Rs. 2200, while our Under performer call on HUL remains unaltered
(price target of Rs. 160)."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Hindustan Unilever Limited is the Indian arm of the Anglo-Dutch company –
Unilever.Both Unilever and HUL have established themselves well in the Fast
MovingConsumer Goods (FMCG) category. In India, the company offers many
householdsbrands like, Dove, Lifebuoy, Lipton,Lux, Pepsodent, Ponds, Rexona,
Sunsilk, Surf, Vaseline etc. Some of its efforts werealso rewarded when four of
HUL brands found place in the ‘Top 10 brands’ list forthe year 2008 published in
The Economic Times.
Unilever was a result of the merger between the Dutch margarine
company,Margarine Unie, and the British soap-maker, Lever Brothers, way back
in 1930. For70 years, Unilever was the undisputed market leader but now faces
toughcompetition from Proctor & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.HUL is also
known for its strong distribution network in India.
In order to furtherstrengthen its distribution in the rural areas and to empower the
local women, HULlaunched a Project Shakti in 2000 in a district in Andhra
Pradesh. The idea behindthis project was to create women entrepreneurs and
provide them with micro-creditand training in enterprise management, which
would enable them to create self-help groups and become direct-to-home
distributors of HUL products.
Today ProjectShakti is present across 80,000 villages in 15 states and is helping
manyunderprivileged women earn their livelihood.As the per-capita income of
India is increasing along with the Indian population. So,the future for the FMCG
Companies is bright. To analysis the past performance &the future demand of
HUL, FMCG products we have considered following points:

*We have a listed the different FMCG product lines of HUL.

*We have done competitor’s analysis in which the market share of top
FMCGcompanies are analysed & the market share of HUL’S different
categoriesproduct are analysed with comparison to its competitors.

*Then performance analysis is made by taking 10 year financial data from1998-

2007. The profit & sales growth is analysed.
Contents Favor Non-Favor No Comment
Language and content of Ad. 72% 20% 8%
Back ground effect of Ad. 50% 20% 30%
expressions and communication styles of 85% 15% -
Rani Mukerji

The Ad plays an important role for giving boost to rural consumers feeling. The
feeling plays very important role. The Language and content (72%) and expression
style of Rani Mukerji (85%) play significant role.
BPL advertisement 
Contents Favor Non-Favor No Comment
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as a 75% 20% 5%
brand Ambassador of LUX
The Action style of Aishwarya 65% 30% 5%
Rai Bachchan
The language of Ad. 62% 20% 18%

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a leading player in the ad feature. The Action style of
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a very delighted factor for rural Consumers.
Suggestions

1) Rural consumer environment must be understood before the creation of ad.

2) Rural mindset accepts the brands easily, which are close to their culture. This
point must be reflected in ad for rural markets. 

3) Sponsorships to the Melas and Hats must be considered in a significant manner.

4) Selection of brand ambassadors, lyrics must not be ignored in this regard.

They have a special liking for folk culture so this can be taken in an effective
utilization of brand promotions.

Conclusions
The Language and content must be according to the suitability of rural
environment.
Background figures are also a deterministic factor.Admissibility of brand
ambassadors plays an important role in this regard. Special promotion measures
are the strong applicable factors in this regard.
Thus from the study of HUL it can be understood that being so large and so
extensive in brands it has allocated equal importance to each of its product and
services. Moreover being so evident in each of its segment which is widely used by
Indian as well as world wide customers;

HUL is not only focusing in major brands but also on those brands which are not
performing well and new products are brought into market by viewing the
importance of Innovation in this changing environment. As bees are treated as
social insects, committed to prioritising the colony's needs and working together.
Such team work and a passionate commitment to achieve a shared goal is what
helps HUL create milestones.