INTRODUCTION Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is India's largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company, touching the lives of two out of three Indians with over 20distinct categories in Home & Personal Care Products and Foods & Beverages. The company’s Turnover is Rs. 20, 239 crores (for the 15 month period ± January1, 2008 to March 31, 2009).Hindustan unilever limited is a subsidiary of Unilever, one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with strong local roots in more than 100countries across the globe with annual sales of ¼40.5 billion in 2008. Unilever has about 52% shareholding in HUL. Hindustan Unilever was recently rated among the top four companies globally in the list of Global Top Companies for Leaders´ by a study sponsored by Hewitt Associates, in partnership with Fortune magazine and the RBL Group. The company was ranked number one in the Asia-Pacific region and in India. The mission that inspires HUL's more than 15,000 employees, including over 1,400 managers, is to ³add vitality to life". The company meets everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene, and personal care, with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life. It is a mission HUL shares with its parent company, Unilever, which holds about 52 % of the equity Heritage HUL’s heritage dates back to 1888, when the first Unilever product, Sunlight, was introduced in India. Local manufacturing began in the 1930s with the establishment of subsidiary companies. They merged in 1956 to form Hindustan Lever Limited (The company was renamed Hindustan Unilever Limited on June25, 2007). The company created history when it offered equity to Indian shareholders, becoming the first foreign subsidiary company to do so. Today, the company has more than three lakh resident shareholders. HUL’s brands -- like Lifebuoy, Lux, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Sunsilk, Clinic, Close-up, Pepsodent, Lakme, Brooke Bond, Kissan, Knorr, Annapurna, Kwality-Walls - are household names across the country and spanmany categories - soaps, detergents, personal products, tea, coffee, branded staples, ice cream and culinary products. They are manufactured in over 35 factories, several of them in backward areas of the country. The operations involve
over 2,000 suppliers and associates. HUL's distribution network covers 6.3 million retail outlets including direct reach to over 1 million. HUL has traditionally been a company, which incorporates latest technology in all its operations. The Hindustan Lever Research Centre (now Hindustan Unilever Research Centre) was set up in 1958 Doing well by doing good HUL believes that an organisation’s worth is also in the service it renders to the community. HUL focuses on hygiene, nutrition, enhancement of livelihoods, reduction of greenhouse gases and water footprint. It is also involved in education and rehabilitation of special or underprivileged children, care for the destitute and HIV-positive, and rural development. HUL has also responded in case of national calamities / adversities and contributes through various welfare measures, most recent being the relief and rehabilitation of the people affected by the Tsunami disaster, in India. HUL’s Project Shakti is a rural initiative that targets small villages populated by less than 5000 individuals. Through Shakti, HUL is creating micro-enterprise opportunities for rural women, thereby improving their livelihood and the standard of living in rural communities. Shakti also provides health and hygiene education through the Shakti Vani programme. The program now covers 15 states in India and has over 45,000 women entrepreneurs in its fold, reaching out to 100,000villages and directly reaching to over three million rural consumers. HUL also runs a rural health programme, Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana. The programme endeavors to induce adoption of hygienic practices among rural Indians and aims to bring down the incidence of diarrhea. It has already touched120 million people in approximately 50, 676 villages across India
REVIEW OF LITERATURE Hindustan Unilever Limited is the Indian arm of the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever. Both Unilever and HUL have established themselves well in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) category. In India, the company offers many households brands like, Dove, Lifebuoy, Lipton, Lux, Pepsodent, Ponds, Rexona, Sunsilk, Surf, Vaseline etc. Some of its efforts were also rewarded when four of HUL brands found place in the µTop 10 brands’ list for the 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.For 70 years, Unilever was the undisputed market leader but now faces tough competition from Proctor & Gamble and ColgatePalmolive. HUL is also known for its strong distribution network in India. In order to further strengthen its distribution in the rural areas and to empower the local women, HUL launched a Project Shakti in 2000 in a district in Andhra Pradesh. The idea behind this project was to create women entrepreneurs and provide them with micro-credit and training in enterprise management, which would enable them to create self-help groups and become direct-to-home distributors of HUL products. Today Project Shakti is present across 80,000 villages in 15 states and is helping many underprivileged 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 FMCG companies are analysed & the market share of HUL’S different categories product are analysed with comparison to its competitors. The future opportunities for FMCG products are taken into consideration by analyzing the increased per capita income & increased disposable income to forecast the future demand of HUL
OBJECTIVE OF STUDY The main objective of this project is to find, what are the steps Hindustan Unilever Ltd. is adapting to be market leader and to differentiate itself from its competitors. What is the steps company is utilizing to find current trend in the market. To study various brands of HUL To study the competitive brands in the market of ,home care products. food brands, personal care products To find the market share of the HUL brands and its competitive brands. To determine the key areas of strength and weakness for HUL brands To develop a promotion plan for brand communication of the HUL To study various marketing strategies of HUL
Identification of the problem The problems that Hindustan Unilever Limited currently facing is increasing input costs and operations costs due to rise in raw material costs, increasing imitative and spurious products, and stiff competition from other FMCG players.
