Hindustan Unilever Limited's Project Shakti: Rural Market Analysis

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Hindustan Unilever Limited's (HUL) Project Shakti, a significant rural marketing initiative in India. The assignment explores the background of HUL, its mission statement, and the rationale behind Project Shakti, which aims to empower rural women by providing them with income-generating opportunities. It details the project's operational mechanics, including how it empowers women entrepreneurs to sell HUL products in villages. The report examines challenges faced, such as skill gaps and low wages, and the solutions implemented, like mentorship and incentives. It covers the political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological factors influencing Project Shakti, using PEST analysis. The report also discusses the issues in scaling up the project and its results, emphasizing economic value creation, microfinance promotion, and improved knowledge among rural women. The report also analyzes the competitive advantages of rural India, and provides a graph based on exhibit 8 of the assignment brief. Finally, the report concludes by highlighting the impact of the project on rural consumers.

International
Business
1

Background of Unilever
 Hindustan Unilever Limited is the largest ‘Fast Moving Consumer Goods’
company in India
 Unilever was founded in 1895 in India (Rao 2014)
 Formerly incorporated in the year 1933
 Headquarter- Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
 Key people- Nitin Paranje (MD and CEO); Harish Manwani (Chairman)
 Employment source- about 200,000 indirect jobs and 15,000 permanent
job
 Turnover- 25206 crore (Chiedu, Long and Ashar 2017)
 No. of employees- more than 220,000 employees globally
 R&D centres- Bangalore and Mumbai, India
2

Mission Statement
“to add vitality to life. We meet
everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and
personal care with brands that help
people feel good, look good and get more
out of life (Austen-Smith et al. 2017)”
3

Project Shakti
 HUL (Hindustan Unilever Limited)
 Started in the year 2001
 increasing the rural distribution reach of the
company (Subbaiah and Bharathi 2017)
 Providing the rural women with opportunities
for income generating (Chandrashekhar and
Murali Krishna 2016)
4

5 Why Project Shakti?
 Considering the fact that Shakti means strength and empowerment of
women, Project Shakti is introduced to empower women and equal
opportunities at work
 The project Shakti is managed to transform the rural India and manage
growth and evolvement of FMCG companies
 Project Shakti is also aimed at the entering into new markets and
develops brands through meeting the demands of local people
 The project is undertaken for creating sustainable livelihood
opportunities and improves the lives of unprivileged rural women
 This will also help in making the women get employment opportunities
and sources of income for living properly in the future

What is Project Shakti?
 Training the female entrepreneurs who live in the rural areas in India
and sells the products of the company to the village markets when
supporting the independence of women (Prugl 2015).
Existing
contribut
ion to
the CSR
activities
Project
Shakti
Existing
Busines
s
Activitie
s
Social Business Initiatives
Business aspect
Social
Aspect
6

7 How Project Shakti work?
 Investments are done and financial resources are borrowed from SHG for
making purchases
 A team is formed consisting of the 10 to 15 women from the village
 The HLL products are sold in the village and micro credit is provided by
the sponsoring agency
 The sustainable living was promoted by providing them with
environment to empower the unprivileged rural women
 They were also provided with training and developmental sessions
regarding the health and hygiene maintenance and make them
financially independent too

8 Crossing the Chasm
 The crossing of chasm means identifying the challenges and delivering proposed
solutions to overcome those issues
 The challenges included the lack of skills and knowledge of women in undertaking
the economic activities, because they were not previously associated with the
project
 The few months during the beginning of project were difficult to cope up with while
the consumers were provided with a lower wage structure
 One of the solutions was the appointing of a Rural Sales Person for mentoring the
entrepreneurs of Shakti project and guide them in the right direction
 Incentives were provided and cash rewards to boost their morale level and enhance
their performance potential
 The low unit price packets, also referred to as the sachets were introduced in the
market for easy accessibility by the customers

Areas covered by Project Shakti9

10 Why did HLL chose women
 The women are chosen as the major contributors to the Shakti project
because they are the most marginalized group within the society
 The women should be provided with equal opportunities like the men
and teach them about health and hygiene
 They would be able to become financial independent, furthermore take
care of their health, improve their educational level and create positive
impacts on the entire household
 The women could form better networks and feel free to communicate
with people and gain additional sources of income with much ease

Working process of Project Shakti
 The villages that are with total population of near about two thousands
to three thousands are selected
 The personnel from the Hindustan Unilever Limited approach SHFs
 Choosing the Shakti Ammas (Kimbro et al. 2018)
 The company couches for the Shakti Ammas with the banks from credit
 Appointment of one Shakti entrepreneur for each village that are about
two kilometres away from each other (Tang 2018)
 Placing initial order of about 15000 rupees by the Shakti dealer
 The dealers organises “Shakti Day” in village for displaying the products
and free gifts.
11

12 Other initiatives to support Project Shakti
 To support project Shakti, the HLL executives provided trial sessions and
demos to make the women influenced in engaging during the project
 The streamlining of iShakti as a corporate social responsibility initiative
further helped in collecting data and information with proper support by
Government
 Dramas and small events were arranged to foster the interest of the
individuals and ensure providing them knowledge about the success of the
Women entrepreneurs
 The use of mobile phones, sending messages though emails and SMS were
made understood to the women
 A successful manager who possess relevant leadership skills is appointed to
keep the members motivated and encouraged during the project undertaking