Marketing Management

Unilever India - Case Synopsis

Submitted by:

ABHINAV JOSHI (1)

BHASKAR BARUAH (11)
SANTOSH HEGDE (21)
MOLUCHANG AO (31)
SABIR SALAM (41)
SONIA RAWAT (51)
VIKAS YADAV (61)
Situation Analysis

• Unilever is the world’s largest FMCG company with $55bn turnover

• It’s Indian subsidiary HLL had revenues of $2.43bn with 46% gross profit

• HLL has a broad portfolio of over 1000 SKU’s across 20 categories

• Over 70% of Indian population residing in villages

• Poor connectivity to most of these villages a problem.

• Project Shakti was launched to reach the rural markets

• Streamline was launched in 1997 to reach the inaccessible markets to

increase the market share

• Project Shakti enhances more participation of women in the marketing and

selling the product because the male in the family is engaged in other wage
earning works

• The HLL also introduced Shakti Vani to enhance information exchange and
better communication between SHG’s

• By 2004, Shakti had 12,151 entrepreneurs covering more than 50,405

villages in 12 states.

Challenges

• To compete with P&G & Colgate-Palmolive who are reputed companies in

the similar product category

• In convincing the brand managers to pick up Shakti’s promotion and brand

building costs.
 • Variations in the status of women and languages across states.

• How to encourage Shakti entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas to

promote the sales?

• To achieve the objective of contributing 15-20% of HLL’s revenue by 1lakh

entrepreneurs

Managing Project Shakti in long term

In the long run HLL will need to take the following steps –

• Expand into more villages / regions – areas near the Nalgonda village
in AP, have become saturated. So the HLL operations must expand to
other villages within the state and also into other states.

• Get other players into the market – HLL can also invite other players
into the market – who have FMCG goods – but are unable to penetrate
into the rural market. Then people can buy an LIC policy with their
regular HLL products.

• iShakti – make the use of IT as its new expansion policy and make the
people tech – savvy. They started off i-Shakti in Nalgonda village of AP.

i-Shakti and Shakti Vani – survivals for Shakti

 • i-Shakti and Shahti Vani are Shakti’s initiatives created to
provide rural India with access to information and social
communication

• the setting up costs for those two programs are quite

high, Rs 150 million, funding is likely to be achievable
because this cost occupies about 3.6% of Shakti’s
revenues and therefore Shakti itself can finance these
programs.

• Funding is also possibly receivable by persuading other

profits centers to invest in the programs and by using the
revenues of iShakti to finance Vani.

• Vani itself does not generate revenues directly, but it is a

powerful tool to increase hygiene awareness in rural India,
as a result indirectly increases HLL sales at long term.

• In short, iShakti and Vani will be workable and scalable to

help Shakti success.

Social Impact and Role of Business

• HLL should make a social impact on rural India.

• HLL can and will continue to enjoy the competitive

advantages as the main company to participate in social
development.

• The connection between business and communities will

develop lifetime customers for HLL. This involvement may
not be the typical role of business, but as long as it is
profitable to HLL without compromising moral and legal
issues, it will be a good move for HLL to increase its
reputation as a socially responsible organization.
 Recommendations

• Introduce “Project Shakti” as a low cost marketing tool to

the brand managers

• Shakti should continue as it is providing HLL a distinct

competitive edge and increase HLL’s profits and growth.
Moreover, Shakti helps to position HLL as socially
responsible organization.

• Organizing workshops to enhance the marketing abilities of

the Shakti Entrepreneurs.