Dabur: A CSR powerhouse

Companies nowadays other than the fact that they have to compulsorily
undertake some corporate social responsibility initiative, are also working on
their corporate branding to build on their brand equity. While it may generally
just turn out to be a marketing stint, some actually invest a lot of time and effort
into making these activities a cause which the public can look upto and bring to
light some of the key issues facing our society.
Dabur is one such company that has revolutionized the CSR initiative that is now
considered a compulsion for companies. Dabur has always believed that
businesses can, and should, have a positive impact on the communities they
serve. The company has recognized that success goes hand in hand with earning
the respect and trust of its customers and as such everyone involved in the
hierarchy has made a conscious effort in serving the society in any way they can
by being responsible and doing things that are good for the planet and each
other. Dabur has a two-pronged approach when it comes to community and
social initiatives. The first pillar of this movement is the various brands and
initiatives that have been at the forefront of not only meeting the consumer's
ever-changing needs but also doing good to the society at large. The second and an equally strong - pillar in there community initiatives such as:
-

SUNDESH (Sustainable Development Society): an NGO that's sworn

to the mission of ensuring overall socio-economic development of the rural
& urban poor on a sustainable basis, through different participatory and
need-based initiatives.
Swasthya Chetna Abhiyan: A programme launched rural Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar, covering 6 districts of rural Bihar and 2 districts of rural Uttar
Pradesh, informing people of the various diseases across India and raising
awareness about low immunity across the population.
Samajdhar Maa, Swasth Bacha: The basic aim of this campaign was to
address and engage mothers of infants through a health check-up for the
infant.
Machchar Mukti Abhiyan: This initiative was started in order to raise
awareness on several deadly mosquito borne diseases like Dengue and
Chikungunya, which already claims thousands of lives thousands of lives
across the country each year. Dabur in turn, has also partnered up with
Odomos has been working towards drowning the drone of mosquitoes in
small towns across northern Indian with its this particular campaign.

This study will focus specifically on Community Volunteering which all 4 of the
above listed initiatives represent. This initiative is specifically focused on a
company encouraging its employees and business partners to voluntarily donate
their time and talent to organisations or causes. Dabur in its case, gives paid
time off for its volunteering work .Now, this initiative is quite different from the
other CSR initiatives, as it only involves the employees and business partners of
a company. It is the not the company that is engaging in these activities but the
employees and the business partners that engage in the different activities. This
initiative is generally not regarded as a philanthropic CSR initiative because
companies do not donate anything and only encourage their employees and
business partners to volunteer to charity. However, in it can be argued that a
company donates manpower, in which case the initiative can be categorised as
philanthropy.

Sundesh
Perhaps one of the more important initiatives of Dabur, Sundesh was formed to
reach out to the weaker and more vulnerable sections such as women and
children, illiterate and the unemployed of our society. And today, Sundesh
operates in Ghaziabad & Gautam Budh Nagar districts (Uttar Pradesh), Rudrapur
district (Uttarakhand) and Baddi (Himachal Pradesh). The various initiatives
provided by this particular NGO are as follows
Education For All:
-

Non-Formal Education- Education to children between 6-14 years of age by

holding classes at village centres and encouraging them to seek formal
education.
Adult Literacy- Sundesh also provides education to women in the age
group of 14-35 years. After attaining education, these women are then
provided with training in various self -employment activities such as
cutting and tailoring, food preservation, mushroom cultivation, mehandi
application, etc.
Special School for Child Labour- Sundesh provides special education to
child labourers (8-13 years of age) under National Child Labour Project.
Currently Dabur is running five education centers in Loni Block.
Library- Sundesh manages a library for children to inculcate the habit of
reading amongst them.

Health Care To the underprivileged - It also provides health care facilities to

the villagers. The main aim is to empower villagers with the essential knowledge
which would enable them to lead a healthy life in their respective localities. In
addition, the Sundesh Health Team includes a medical officer, lab technician,
Community Health Workers and Traditional Birth Attendants. Health aid priorities
include:
-

General OPD at the center.

Pathological Testing Facility at the center.
Provision of essential drugs at the center.
Health check - ups through OPDs and camps in the villages.
Self Help Groups (Micro Credit Society)

An initiative by the team has also been taken to promote, support and design a
number of poverty alleviation programmes in collaboration and guidelines given
by District Rural Development Agency, Ghaziabad through Swarn Jayanti
Gramin Vikas Sawrojgar Yojna for Below Poverty Line people and National
Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for general families in the
targeted villages. The main objective being to form Self Help Groups / micro
credit groups and linking these SHGs with credit institutions. Dabur provides
cooperation in building mutual trust and confidence between the bankers and
the rural poor. These credit groups are motivated to utilize the savings for

economic betterment. For this they are also given training on various income
generation activities such as mushroom cultivation, cutting and tailoring, bee
keeping,
food
preservation
etc.

Swasthya Chetna Abhiyan

The 45-day activity took place in 2015 covering almost 540 villages and reaching
almost 20 lakh people in the two states. This is the first major activity of Dabur
that made use of a celebrity Ravi Kishan in their activation programme because
of his mass appeal in the areas the company was trying to reach. The main idea
of this campaign was both to generate awareness of Dabur Chyawanprash as a
natural immunity booster and on how vulnerable people can be because of low
immunity and how the product can help strengthen their immunity. The
campaign took place throughout the UP an Bihar markets, where people are not
that aware of its benefits and in some cases was (an extension of the company's
school-contact programme - called Immune India in urban areas to to rural areas.
The campaign's elements have been designed to create awareness by
conducting health camps in rural areas.
The activity consisted of five major elements:
-

free health check-up

engagement activities
movie screenings, spot sales
A meet and greet opportunity with brand ambassador, Ravi Kishan.

The company had three branded vans, accompanied by three doctors each,
which went from village to village conducting the engagement activity and basic
health check-ups. In addition, movies of Ravi Kishan were screened, along with
inserts of messages about Dabur Chyawanprash. Dabur used feeds by Ravi
Kishan on how vulnerable people can be because of low immunity and how the
product can help strengthen their immunity. The company had also introduced
interactive games such as snakes and ladders, where snakes represented illness
and ladders were represented by Dabur Chyawanprash, with messages about the
brand's benefit spread across the board. Key interactions took place among the
Sarpanch of various villages and health workers, because in order to educate the
village leaders themselves who could then further pass down the messages to
the village inhabitants.
Samajdhar Maa, Swasth Bacha

Dabur, a leader in the market, has undertaken various activities in order to

reinforce their product more strongly and to establish a better consumer
connect. Samajdhar Maa, Swasth Bacha was another rural activation campaign
which had been undertaken for Dabur Lal Tail in Chattisgarh and Madhya
Pradesh. This 60 day activity was flagged off in the first week of December 2010.
With Ogilvy Action as the activation agency, this campaign targeted at 1 lac
women in 5000 plus villages and towns which includes upcountry and sub-urban
areas.
The basic aim of this campaign was to address and engage mothers of infants
through a health check-up for the infant and puts forth the benefits of Danur to
establish the functional benefits and superiority of Dabur Lal Tail over ordinary oil
through consumer awareness and education. This programme undertook the
initiative with mothers being the primary target and also with the association and
endorsement of doctors and RMP for reinforcement and sustenance. As every
mother has a natural desire for her child to be healthy and grow faster and
emerge stronger. This leads her to adopt the best practices in infant care and
anything that delivers beyond the "normal' in the child's development is
considered. Understanding this, the Dabur Lal Tail campaign has been designed
to educate the primary TG i.e. the mother about the clinically proven benefits of
Dabur Lal Tail. In the research. The campaign highlighted the clinical claims
established through research and communicate the Two times faster growth
aspect. A mobile health camp was undertaken for a day The compNY involved
local influencers like rural proclaimed by Dabur. Medical practitioners/Doctors
were also called in to bring credibility to the campaign and build sustenance for
the brand message. Dabur Lal Tail's massage helps in strengthening baby's
bones and muscles and is proven safe and effective for better overall physical
growth of babies, and these benefits are also shared with the influencers.
Leaflet and coupons were distributed a day prior to the main activity. Also
posters and hangers were put up at retail and chemist outlets. The activation
also saw distribution of infant health cards and trial generation through
sampling. Till date, about 40 villages have been covered and 8900 mothers and
269 chemists and retailers have been contacted. Dabur has received positive
feedback on this initiative and also established that this project helped in the
larger health awareness.
Although this maybe classified as a brand promotion campaign, it definitely helps
in driving the larger health awareness message of "Healthy Child, Wise Mother".
Considering the fact that this programme helped the company reach out to a
large number of babies and mothers in the remotest of villages, we are also
offering free health check-ups to these villagers, and the campaign has adopted
an integrated design of addressing the social issues of rural child health and
maternal care.
Machchar Mukti Abhiyan
The past few years had seen India emerge as the hotbed of several deadly
mosquito borne diseases like Dengue and Chikungunya. The alarming spike in
the number of mosquito-borne illnesses this year has already claimed thousands
of lives across the country. People in the hinterland are more affected by these
diseases as they sleep in the open and are not aware about effective methods to
prevent themselves from mosquito bites. Odomos has been working towards
drowning the drone of mosquitoes in small towns across northern Indian with its

Macchar Mukti Abhiyan campaign. Through a mix of audio-visuals, street plays

and other awareness generation activities, Dabur have been able to reach out to
1.2 lakh people in 232 villages of Uttar Pradesh. Almost 50 per cent of the
programme component is concentrated on why mosquitoes are harmful and also
educate people about the effective prevention methods. Odomos also worked
with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to spread awareness about how to
prevent breeding of mosquitoes and protect yourself from mosquito-borne
diseases
Impact of CSR initiatives on Dabur as a Brand
To conclude, Dabur, while its name connotes reliability & warmth, with these CSR
initiatives the company is gaining immensely from the goodwill generated by
activities such as the SUNDESH initiatives. Dabur symbolizes not just good
quality products but also as a friend, philosopher & guide that is with the
beneficiary and consumer at every step of their life.

Works Cited
Ltd, P. W. (2016, August). Annual Report- Dabur. Retrieved from BSE India:
http://www.bseindia.com/bseplus/AnnualReport/500096/5000960311.pdf
The Hindu Bureau. (2016, August). Dabur Goes rural with campaign for
immunity . Retrieved from The Hindo:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/dabur-goes-rural-withcampaign-for-immunity/article1568182.ece
Ishan . (2016, August). Retrieved from Good Morning Ishan:
http://goodmorningishan.blogspot.in/2011/08/csr-activity-of-dabur-indialimited.html