Introduction to HUL

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is India's largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company with a heritage of over 75 years in India and touches the lives of two out of three Indians.
HUL works to create a better future every day and helps people feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others. With over 35 brands spanning 20 distinct categories such as soaps, detergents, shampoos, skin care, toothpastes, deodorants, cosmetics, tea, coffee, packaged foods, ice cream, and water purifiers, the Company is a part of the everyday life of millions of consumers across India. Its portfolio includes leading household brands such as Lux, Lifebuoy, Surf Excel, Rin, Wheel, Fair & Lovely, Ponds, Vaseline, Lakm, Dove, Clinic Plus, Sunsilk, Pepsodent, Closeup, Axe, Brooke Bond, Bru, Knorr, Kissan, Kwality Walls and Pureit. The Company has over 16,000 employees and has an annual turnover of around Rs.19, 401 crores (financial year 2010 - 2011). HUL is a subsidiary of Unilever, one of the worlds leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with strong local roots in more than 100 countries across the globe with annual sales of about 44 billion in 2011. Unilever has about 52% shareholding in HUL.

Our history
In the summer of 1888, visitors to the Kolkata harbour noticed crates full of Sunlight soap bars, embossed with the words "Made in England by Lever Brothers". With it, began an era of marketing branded Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).

Soon after followed Lifebuoy in 1895 and other famous brands like Pears, Lux and Vim. Vanaspati was launched in 1918 and the famous Dalda brand came to the market in 1937. In 1931, Unilever set up its first Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Vanaspati Manufacturing Company, followed by Lever Brothers India Limited (1933) and United Traders Limited (1935). These three companies merged to form HUL in November 1956; HUL offered 10% of its equity to the Indian public, being the first among the foreign subsidiaries to do so. Unilever now holds 52.10% equity in the company. The rest of the shareholding is distributed among about 360,675 individual shareholders and financial institutions. The erstwhile Brooke Bond's presence in India dates back to 1900. By 1903, the company had launched Red Label tea in the country. In 1912, Brooke Bond & Co. India Limited was formed. Brooke Bond joined the Unilever fold in 1984 through an international acquisition. The erstwhile Lipton's links with India were forged in 1898. Unilever acquired Lipton in 1972, and in 1977 Lipton Tea (India) Limited was incorporated. Pond's (India) Limited had been present in India since 1947. It joined the Unilever fold through an international acquisition of Chesebrough Pond's USA in 1986. Since the very early years, HUL has vigorously responded to the stimulus of economic growth. The growth process has been accompanied by judicious diversification, always in line with Indian opinions and aspirations.

The liberalisation of the Indian economy, started in 1991, clearly marked an inflexion in HUL's and the Group's growth curve. Removal of the regulatory framework allowed the company to explore every single product and opportunity segment, without any constraints on production capacity. Simultaneously, deregulation permitted alliances, acquisitions and mergers. In one of the most visible and talked about events of India's corporate history, the erstwhile Tata Oil Mills Company (TOMCO) merged with HUL, effective from April 1, 1993. In 1996, HUL and yet another Tata company, Lakme Limited, formed a 50:50 joint venture, Lakme Unilever Limited, to market Lakme's market-leading cosmetics and other appropriate products of both the companies. Subsequently in 1998, Lakme Limited sold its brands to HUL and divested its 50% stake in the joint venture to the company. HUL formed a 50:50 joint venture with the US-based Kimberly Clark Corporation in 1994, Kimberly-Clark Lever Ltd, which markets Huggies Diapers and Kotex Sanitary Pads. HUL has also set up a subsidiary in Nepal, Unilever Nepal Limited (UNL), and its factory represents the largest manufacturing investment in the Himalayan kingdom. The UNL factory manufactures HUL's products like Soaps, Detergents and Personal Products both for the domestic market and exports to India. The 1990s also witnessed a string of crucial mergers, acquisitions and alliances on the Foods and Beverages front. In 1992, the erstwhile Brooke Bond acquired Kothari General Foods, with significant interests in Instant Coffee. In 1993, it acquired the Kissan business from the UB Group and the Dollops Icecream business from Cadbury India. As a measure of backward integration, Tea Estates and Doom Dooma, two plantation companies of Unilever, were merged with Brooke Bond. Then in 1994, Brooke Bond India and Lipton India merged to form Brooke Bond Lipton India Limited (BBLIL), enabling greater focus and ensuring synergy in the traditional Beverages business. 1994 witnessed BBLIL launching the Wall's range of Frozen Desserts. By the end of the year, the company entered into a strategic alliance with the Kwality Icecream Group families and in 1995 the Milkfood 100% Icecream marketing and distribution rights too were acquired. Finally, BBLIL merged with HUL, with effect from January 1, 1996. The internal restructuring culminated in the merger of Pond's (India) Limited (PIL) with HUL in 1998. The two companies had significant overlaps in Personal Products, Speciality Chemicals and Exports businesses, besides a common distribution system since 1993 for Personal Products. The two also had a common management pool and a technology base. The amalgamation was done to ensure for the Group, benefits from scale economies both in domestic and export markets and enable it to fund investments required for aggressively building new categories. In January 2000, in a historic step, the government decided to award 74 per cent equity in Modern Foods to HUL, thereby beginning the divestment of government equity in public sector undertakings (PSU) to private sector partners. HUL's entry into Bread is a strategic extension of the company's wheat business. In 2002, HUL acquired the government's remaining stake in Modern Foods. In 2003, HUL acquired the Cooked Shrimp and Pasteurised Crabmeat business of the Amalgam Group of Companies, a leader in value added Marine Products exports. HUL launched a slew of new business initiatives in the early part of 2000s. Project Shakti was started in 2001. It is a rural initiative that targets small villages populated by less than 5000 individuals. It is a unique win-win initiative that catalyses rural affluence even as it benefits business. Currently, there are over 45,000 Shakti entrepreneurs covering over 100,000 villages across 15 states and reaching to over 3 million homes. In 2002, HUL made its foray into Ayurvedic health & beauty centre category with the Ayush product range and Ayush Therapy Centres. Hindustan Unilever Network, Direct to home business was launched in 2003 and this was followed by the launch of Pureit water purifier in 2004. In 2007, the Company name was formally changed to Hindustan Unilever Limited after receiving the approval of share holders during the 74th AGM on 18 May 2007. Brooke Bond and Surf Excel breached the the Rs 1,000 crore sales mark the same year followed by Wheel which crossed the Rs.2,000 crore sales milestone in 2008. On 17th October 2008 , HUL completed 75 years of corporate existence in India.

Company structure

Hindustan Unilever Limited is India's largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company. It is present in Home & Personal Care and Foods & Beverages categories. HUL has about 15,000 employees, including over 1400 managers
The fundamental principle determining the organisation structure is to infuse speed and flexibility in decision-making and implementation, with empowered managers across the companys nationwide operations.

Board of Directors
The Board of Directors as repositories of the corporate powers act as a guardian to the Company as also the protectors of shareholders interest.

Management Committee
The day-to-day management of affairs of the Company is vested with the Management Committee which is subjected to the overall superintendence and control of the Board.

Our vision
Unilever products touch the lives of over 2 billion people every day whether that's through feeling great because they've got shiny hair and a brilliant smile, keeping their homes fresh and clean, or by enjoying a great cup of tea, satisfying meal or healthy snack.

A clear direction
The four pillars of our vision set out the long term direction for the company where we want to go and how we are going to get there:

We work to create a better future every day We help people feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others. We will inspire people to take small everyday actions that can add up to a big difference for the world. We will develop new ways of doing business with the aim of doubling the size of our company while reducing our environmental impact. We've always believed in the power of our brands to improve the quality of peoples lives and in doing the right thing. As our business grows, so do our responsibilities. We recognise that global challenges such as climate change concern us all. Considering the wider impact of our actions is embedded in our values and is a fundamental part of who we are.

Purpose & principles

Our corporate purpose states that to succeed requires "the highest standards of corporate behaviour towards everyone we work with, the communities we touch, and the environment on which we have an impact."

Always working with integrity

Conducting our operations with integrity and with respect for the many people, organisations and environments our business touches has always been at the heart of our corporate responsibility.

Positive impact
We aim to make a positive impact in many ways: through our brands, our commercial operations and relationships, through voluntary contributions, and through the various other ways in which we engage with society.

Continuous commitment
We're also committed to continuously improving the way we manage our environmental impacts and are working towards our longer-term goal of developing a sustainable business.

Setting out our aspirations

Our corporate purpose sets out our aspirations in running our business. It's underpinned by our code of business Principles which describes the operational standards that everyone at Unilever follows, wherever they are in the world. The code also supports our approach to governance and corporate responsibility.

Working with others

We want to work with suppliers who have values similar to our own and work to the same standards we do. Our Business partner code, aligned to our own Code of business principles, comprises ten principles covering business integrity and responsibilities relating to employees, consumers and the environment.

Food brands
HUL is one of Indias leading food companies. Our passion for understanding what people want and need from their food - and what they love about it - makes our brands a popular choice

Brooke Bond 3 Roses

Playful banter, a little mischief, serious conversation theres no time for young couples like the time spent sharing a cup of 3 Roses.

Annapurna
Partnering with the mom in nurturing her dreams, Annapurna Atta is aimed at helping her provide wholesome tasty nutrition to her family.

Red Label
Brooke Bond Red Label 'Chuskiyaan Zindagi ki'

Brooke Bond Taaza

Brooke Bond Taaza

Brooke Bond Taj Mahal

Brooke Bond Taj Mahal is an exclusive selection of teas for the discerning consumer.

Bru
Bru se hoti hain khushiyaan shuru

Kissan
With Kissan, good food is loved not shoved!

Knorr
Knorr helps families make meal times special, nutritious, tasty and healthy.

Kwality Walls
A good honest scoop of daily pleasure.

Lipton
Lipton has a range of vitality teas that truly encompass the goodness of tea.

Modern
Modern A Wholesome & Nourishing, Hygienically produced & Reliably Safe Bread

Brooke Bond Sehatmand

BB Sehatmand Jo Sehatmand Woh Aage Har Dum!! (One who is healthy is a step ahead. Always)

Home care brands

HUL has a diverse portfolio of brands offering home care solutions for millions of consumers across India.

Active Wheel
New Active Wheel with Power of lemons and freshness of thousands of flowers!

Cif
Cif- the best cleaner to let you shine.

Comfort
The worlds largest fabric conditioner brand.

Domex
The sheer power of Domex bleach gives you the confidence you need, eradicating all known germs.

Rin
Rin provides best in class whiteness which is demonstrable.

Sunlight
Sunlight is a color care brand

Surf Excel
Giving your kids the freedom to get dirty and experience life, safe in the knowledge that Surf Excel will remove those stains

Vim
Created in 1885, the Vim brand is still innovating and using the magic of natural ingredients to create unbeatable results over a hundred years later.

Personal care brands

Our personal care brands, including Axe, Dove, Lux, Pond's, Rexona and Sunsilk, are recognised and love by consumers across India. They help consumers to look good and feel good and in turn get more out of life.

Aviance
Aviance enables women actualize their unique potential through expert customized beauty solutions.

Axe
Axe with Best Quality Fragrance

LEVER Ayush Therapy

LEVER Ayush aims to help a new generation of Indians rediscover everyday health and vitality through customized Ayurvedic solutions.

Breeze
Breeze, with the goodness of glycerine gives soft, fragrant and smooth skin.

Clear
New Clear with Essential Oils, guarantees Zero dandruff and leaves your hair feeling fabulous.

Clinic Plus
Clinic Plus - makes hair inside strong, outside long!

Closeup
Freshness that brings you Closer

Dove
Dove stands for real beauty. All around the world, Dove is making real women feel more beautiful!

Fair & Lovely

More than 30 years ago, a unique brand was born. Wrapped within a humble lavender tube, it went on to become the Worlds No.1 Fairness cream.

Hamam
Holistic skin care experiences perfected over the ages to deliver healthy, beautiful skin

Lakme
Lakme is an ally to the Indian Woman and inspires her to express her unique beauty and sensuality. Thus, enabling her to realize the potency of her beauty.

Lifebuoy
Lifebuoy is available in multiple variants in soaps and specialist formats such as liquid handwash, catering to the entire family.

Liril 2000
Liril 2000-Now come closer to your loved ones

Lux
Lux For soft and smooth skin!

Pears
Pears the purest and most gentle way to skincare!

Pepsodent
Pepsodent India is committed to improve the overall Oral health of Indians.

Ponds
Get the expert to look after your skin

Rexona
Rexona gives you silky skin irresistible to touch that keeps the romance alive!

Sunsilk
Sunsilk has had a re-style!

Vaseline
Your skin is amazing. It deserves to be treated as such.

Water

Pureit is the worlds most advanced in-home water purifier. Pureit, a breakthrough offering of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), provides complete protection from all water-borne diseases, unmatched convenience and affordability.
Pureits unique Germkill Battery technology kills all harmful viruses and bacteria and removes parasites and pesticide impurities, giving you water that is "as safe as boiled water". It assures your family 100% protection from all water-borne diseases like jaundice, diarrhea, typhoid and cholera. Whats more, it doesnt need gas, electricity or continuous tap water supply. Pureit not only renders water micro-biologically safe, but also makes the water clear, odourless and good-tasting. Pureit does not leave any residual chlorine in the output water. The output water from Pureit meets stringent criteria for microbiologically safe drinking water, from one of the toughest regulatory agencies in the USA, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). The performance of Pureit has also been tested by leading scientific and medical institutions in India and abroad. This patented technological breakthrough has been developed by HUL. This state-of the-art engineering developed by a team of over 100 Indian and international experts from HUL and Unilever Research Centres has made Pureit possible at the consumer price of just Rs. 2000 Pureit runs with a unique Germkill Battery Kit that typically lasts for 1500 litres* of water. The Germkill Battery Kitis priced at Rs.365. This means consumers will get 4 litres of water that is as safe as boiled water for just one rupee, which works out to an extremely affordable 24 paise per litre. Pureit in-home purification system uses a 4 stage purification process to deliver as safe as boiled water without the use of electricity and pressurized tap water. Pureit purifies the input drinking water in four stages, namely; 1. Micro-fiber MeshTM - Removes visible dirt 2. Compact Carbon TrapTM - removes remaining dirt, harmful parasites & pesticide impurities 3. Germkill ProcessorTM uses 'programmed chlorine release chlorine technology' and its stored germkill process targets and kills harmful virus and bacteria 4. PolisherTM removes residual chlorine and all disinfectant by-products, giving clear odourless and great tasting water 5. Battery Life Indicator - Ensures total safety because when the germkill power is exhausted, the indicator turns red, warning you to replace the battery Advanced Auto-Switch off - In case, the battery is not changed when it turns fully red, as an additional assurance of safety, the advanced Auto-Switch off will automatically switch-off the flow of water.

Protect your loved ones with a Pureit today! You can ask for a free home demonstration of Pureit. A trained Pureit Water Expert will visit your home and give you a detailed demonstration of how Pureit works. For a free home demo, queries, or to purchase

Call Pureit Helpline : 09223 200 200 *at a water temperature of 25 Celsius, in moderate humidity conditions

Pureit-Blue

Pureit-Maroon

Nutrition
We've created policies and guidelines to ensure we always act responsibly when it comes to health and nutrition.

Acting responsibly
Millions of people around the world enjoy the foods and drinks we create. So the ingredients we use, the formulations, and the way we advertise and market our brands can potentially make a big impact on global health. We aim to act responsibly and have a strong nutrition policy. We've also developed a carefully considered approach to health and nutrition which includes:

encouraging a balanced diet with the right amount of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals developing a growing range of low fat, low sugar, low calorie alternatives, plus more 'active health' products marketing responsibility our foods and beverages and helping to reduce over-consumption helping people understand the nutritional benefits of our products creating products that reflect the fact that people will only eat foods that they enjoy having sound specific evidence underpinning all our claims making significant contributions to researching the relationship on nutrition and health, such as the effects of good fats (unsalted fats), fruits & vegetables and vitamins and minerals

Clear communication
We've also developed a set of marketing principles to ensure we're always 'honest, decent and truthful' in our communication which include special principles on advertising to children.

As well as excluding anything that appears to condone over-consumption in our marketing, we also prohibit anything that undermines the promotion of healthy, balanced diets and lifestyles, or misrepresents snacks as meals. We will also make sure that any claims made in our marketing about any of our products are supported by scientific evidence. Under our principles for marketing to children, we ensure our advertisements don't convey misleading messages, don't undermine parental influence, don't encourage pester power, don't suggest time or price pressure, don't encourage unhealthy dietary habits, and don't blur the boundary between promotion and content. In addition, as well as supporting the development of international self-regulatory codes for all marketing and advertising, we recently agreed to voluntarily restrict all paid marketing communications (with the exception of packaging) directed primarily at children under the age of six years. We believe that by putting these principles in place, we're not only doing the right thing, but we're being proactive through voluntary self-regulation instead of simply reacting to external pressures.

Health, hygiene & beauty

Unilever's vitality mission is a mandate to help people feel good, look good and get more out of life. At the heart of this mission is hygiene and health through hygiene.

At the heart of our mission

What does 'vitality' really mean to billions of people in the world? How does it manifest itself in their lives? What does it add to their lives when it is present? What are the consequences when it is absent? The desire to be clean, active, energetic and healthy is common to every person, whether young or old, whether rich or poor. To billions in the developing world, health is simply the absence of illness. For them, health is the ability to go to work, to provide a square meal for their families. For their children, health is the ability to play, to go to school, to work towards a better future. For the affluent, health is more than just physical well being. For them the signs of good health being active, energetic, feeling good, looking good allow them to get the most out of life. Yet for the millions of mothers who lose their children to diarrhoea and upper respiratory infections, health is simply about staying alive.

New risks
"The risks are likely to intensify," says Sally Bloomfield, a member of the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene (IFH), which receives an educational grant from Unilever. "As populations age and the incidence of immuno-deficient diseases such as AIDS rises, more people will be vulnerable to the consequences of poor hygiene." "Infectious diseases are also hopping around the world quicker than before due to globalisation, as we saw with SARS and now with Swine Flu. In some cases, you can't treat these with antibiotics as they're viral; others are bacterial but resistant to antibiotics, such as the hospital superbug MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)." New pathogens agents that can cause disease are also constantly appearing. Since the 1970s, at least one new pathogen has been recorded each year. Good hygiene is often the only way to avoid many pathogens and their consequences.

A simple solution
One of the main stumbling blocks, says Dr Val Curtis at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, is that most people do not use one of the world's most basic and widely available home hygiene products the humble bar of soap. "Hands are a superhighway for transmitting germs, but most people don't wash their hands with soap and water at key times," she explains. "In the UK, for example, only 30% of people wash their hands after going to the toilet and only 43% after changing a nappy." The statistics in developing countries are similar.

Health through hygiene

So what's Hindustan Unilever doing?

One of our oldest brands, Lifebuoy, exemplifies our commitment to champion health through hygiene for everyone.