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Hindustan Unilever Ltd

Type Public company BSE: 500696

Industry Fast Moving Consumer Goods FMCG)

Founded 1933

Headquarters Mumbai, India

Harish Manwani (Chairman), Nitin

Key people
Paranjpe (CEO and Managing Director)

Products Home & Personal Care, Food & Beverages

17,873.44 crore (US$3.88 billion) (2009-

Revenue
2010) [1]

Net income 2,202.03 crore (US$477.84 million)

Employees Over 65,000 direct & indirect employees

Parent Unilever Plc (52%)

Website www.hul.co.in

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) (BSE: 500696) is India's largest fast moving consumer
goods company. The Anglo-Dutch company Unilever owns a 52% majority stake.
HUL was formed in 1933 as Lever Brothers India Limited and came into being in 1956 as
Hindustan Lever Limited through a merger of Lever Brothers, Hindustan Vanaspati Mfg. Co.
Ltd. and United Traders Ltd. It is headquartered in Mumbai, India and has an employee strength
of over 15,000 employees and contributes to indirect employment of over 52,000 people. The
company was renamed in June 2007 as “Hindustan Unilever Limited”.

Hindustan Unilever's distribution covers over 1 million retail outlets across India directly and its
products are available in over 6.3 million outlets in the country, nearly 80% of all retail outlets in
India. It estimates that two out of three Indians use its many home and personal care products,
food and beverages.[2]

Contents
[hide]

 1 Brands
 2 Leadership
 3 Other awards
 4 Research facilities
 5 Community services
 6 Direct Selling Division
 7 Controversy
o 7.1 Mercury pollution
o 7.2 Skin lightening creams
o 7.3 Triclosan
 8 See also
 9 Notes
 10 External links

Brands

Wheel Detergent ad in rural Nepal area.

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 (2008).[3] According to Brand Equity,
HUL has the largest number of brands in the Most Trusted Brands List. It has consistently had
the largest number of brands in the Top 50, and in the Top 10 (with 4 brands).

The company has a distribution channel of 6.3 million outlets and owns 35 major Indian brands.
[4]
Its brands include Kwality Wall's ice cream, Knorr soups & meal makers, Lifebuoy, Lux,
Pears, Breeze, Liril, Rexona, Hamam and Moti soaps, Pureit water purifier, Lipton tea, Brooke
Bond (3 Roses, Taj Mahal, Taaza, Red Label) tea, Bru coffee, Pepsodent and Close Up
toothpaste and brushes, and Surf, Rin and Wheel laundry detergents, Kissan squashes and jams,
Annapurna salt and atta, Pond's talcs and creams, Vaseline lotions, Fair and Lovely creams,
Lakmé beauty products, Clear, Clinic Plus, Clinic All Clear, Sunsilk and Dove shampoos, Vim
dishwash, Ala bleach, Domex disinfectant, Modern Bread, Axe deosprays and Comfort fabric
softeners.

Leadership
HUL has produced many business leaders for corporate India; one of these, Manvinder Singh
Banga, has become a member of Unilever's Executive (UEx). HUL's leadership-building
potential was recognized when it was ranked 4th in the Hewitt Global Leadership Survey 2007
with only GE, P&G and Nokia ranking ahead of HUL in the ability to produce leaders with such
regularity.[5][6][7]

Other awards
HUL is one of the country's largest exporters; it has been recognised as a Golden Super Star
Trading House by the Government of India.[2]

In 2007, Hindustan Unilever was rated as the most respected company in India for the past 25
years by Businessworld, one of India’s leading business magazines.[8] The rating was based on a
compilation of the magazine's annual survey of India’s most reputed companies over the past 25
years.

HUL was one of the eight Indian companies to be featured on the Forbes list of World’s Most
Reputed companies in 2007.[9]

Research facilities
The Hindustan Unilever Research Centre (HURC) was set up in 1967 in Mumbai, and Unilever
Research India in Bangalore in 1997. Staff at these centres developed many innovations in
products and manufacturing processes. In 2006, the company's research facilities were brought
together at a single site in Bangalore.[10]
Community services
HUL also renders services to the community, focusing on health & hygiene education,
empowerment of women, and water management. It is also involved in education and
rehabilitation of underprivileged children, care for the destitute and HIV-positive, and rural
development. HUL has also responded to national calamities, for instance with relief and
rehabilitation after the 2004 tsunami caused devastation in South India.[2]

In 2001, the company embarked on a programme called Shakti, through which it creates micro-
enterprises for rural women. Shakti also includes health and hygiene education through the
Shakti Vani Programme, which now covers 15 states in India with over 45,000 women
entrepreneurs in 135,000 villages. By the end of 2010, Shakti aims to have 100,000 Shakti
entrepreneurs covering 500,000 villages, touching the lives of over 600 million people. HUL is
also running a rural health programme, Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana. The programme endeavours
to induce adoption of hygienic practices among rural Indians and aims to bring down the
incidence of diarrhoea. So far it has reached 120 million people in over 50,000 villages.[2]

Direct Selling Division

HUL also runs Hindustan Unilever Network (HULN), a direct selling business arm. Under
HULN, health products are marketed by AYUSH[disambiguation needed] in collaboration with Arya
Vaidya Pharmacy, Coimbatore; beauty products by Aviance; home products by Lever Home, and
male grooming by DIY.[disambiguation needed] There are also premium products for beauty salons and
others.

Controversy
Mercury pollution

In 2001 a thermometer factory in Kodaikanal run by Hindustan Unilever was accused of

dumping glass contaminated with mercury in municipal dumps, or selling it on to scrap
merchants unable to deal with it appropriately.[11]

Skin lightening creams

Hindustan Unilever's "Fair and Lovely" is the leading skin-lightening cream for women in India.
[12]
The company was forced to withdraw television advertisements for the product in 2007.
Advertisements depicted depressed, dark-complexioned women, who had been ignored by
employers and men, suddenly finding new boyfriends and glamorous careers after the cream had
lightened their skin.[13] In 2008 Hindustan Unilever made former Miss World Priyanka Chopra a
brand ambassador for Pond's,[14] and she then appeared in a mini-series of television commercials
for another skin lightening product, White Beauty, alongside Saif Ali Khan and Neha Dhupia;
these advertisements were widely criticised for perpetuating racism.[15]
Triclosan

Several academic papers have pointed out the firm's continued use of the antibacterial agent
Triclosan ('Active B') in India because is under review by the American Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).[16]