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

 20,869.57 crore (US$4.7 billion) (2008-

Revenue
2009) [1]

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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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).A survey conducted by
International Managers Evaluating Committee (IMEC) found that HUL has best managers in
the industry and they are getting best remuneration for their jobs.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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Controversy
[edit] 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]

[edit] 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]

[edit] Triclosan

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

[edit] See also

 Hindustan Unilever on Wikinvest

[edit] Notes
1. ^ 2009 results, Bombay Stock Exchange
2. ^ a b c d "Present stature". official website. Archived from the original on 2008-08-02.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080802090951/http://hul.co.in/knowus/present_stature.asp.
Retrieved 2010-08-15.
3. ^ Brand Equity Most Trusted Brands
4. ^ HUL Annual Report 2007, available from Annual reports page on official website
5. ^ Lucas, MacKenzie (2007-09-19). "Global Top Companies for Leaders Announced". Hewitt
Associates. http://www.hewittassociates.com/Intl/NA/en-
US/AboutHewitt/Newsroom/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?cid=4345. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
6. ^ Kulshrestha, Taneesha (2007-10-18). "Global leadership right here in India". The Financial
Express. http://www.financialexpress.com/news/global-leadership-right-here-in-
india/229374/. Retrieved 2008-11-16.
7. ^ "Hewitt survey: Indian companies break into global leadership ghhglist". domain-b.com.
2007-09-21. http://www.domain-b.com/management/general/20070921_companies.html.
Retrieved 2008-11-16.
8. ^ Business World Most Respected Company 2007
9. ^ Forbes Most Reputed Companies, Nov 2006
10. ^ Overview of Research Centres on official website. Retrieved 2010-08-12
11. ^ Ban.org
12. ^ Anushay Hossain, The Color Complex: Is the Fixation Really Fair?, Sapna magazine, 10
Mar 2008
13. ^ India's hue and cry over paler skin, Daily Telegraph, 1 Jul 2007
14. ^ Priyanka Chopra is the new face of Ponds, Thaindian News, May 6th, 2008
15. ^ Criticism in India over skin-whitening trend, The Daily Telegraph, 10 Jul 2008
16. ^ See for example Jamie Cross and Alice Street "Anthropology at the Bottom of the
Pyramid",