Hul Shaktiamma

Project Report HUL Shakti Amma: Sustainable Livelihood Solutions

Submitted by: Vatan Jugnake – 70

Under the guidance of: Prof. Anita Chouhan

Introduction: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is a British-Dutch manufacturing company headquartered in Mumbai, India Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents, personal care products, water purifiers and consumer goods. As of 2019 Hindustan Unilever portfolio had 35 product brands in 20 categories and employs 18,000 employees with sales of Rs. 34,619 crores in 2017-18. •Unilever has been in India since 1895 •Hindustan Lever formally incorporated in 1956 •A subsidiary of Unilever (51.5%) •Most sought after recruiter among India’s B schools •Source of employment 15,000 permanent employees •200,000 indirect jobs

Some of the major CSR activities of HUL: 1. Greening Barrens (Water Conservation & Harvesting)   It has 2 main objectives:   a) To reduce water consumption in its own operations and generate sub-soil water tables at its own sites through the principles of 5R – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover & Renew.  b) Help adjacent villages to implement appropriate models of watershed development.    2. Shakti – Changing Lives in Rural India  Shakti is HUL’s rural initiative, which targets small villages with population of less than 2000. It seeks to empower under privileged rural women by providing income-generating opportunities, health & hygiene education through Shakti Vani program and creating access to relevant information through the Shakti Community Portal.    3. Health & Hygiene Education   Lifebuoy Swastya Chetna is a rural health and hygiene initiative, started in 2002, was initiated in media dark villages in UP, MP. Bihar, WB, Maharashtra and Orissa for spreading awareness about washing hands with Lifebuoy soap.    4. Economic Empowerment of Women 

The Fair & Lovely Foundation is HUL’s initiative which aims at economic empowerment of women across India. It aims to achieve this through providing information, resources, inputs and support in the areas of education, career and enterprise.  5. Special Education & Rehabilitation    Under the Happy Home initiative, HUL supports special education and rehabilitation of children with challenges.  a) Asha Daan: Initiated in 1976, HUL supported Mother Teresa and Missionaries in Charity to set up a home in Mumbai for abandoned, challenged children and the destitute.  b) Ankur: In 1993, HUL’s Doom Dooma Plantation Division set up Ankur for special education of challenged children aged between 5 and 15 years. Ankur provides educational. Vocational and recreational activities to over 35 children with range of challenges like hearing or sight impairment, polio, cerebral palsy and several learning difficulties.  c) Kappagam: Encouraged by Ankur’s success Kappagam (Shelter), the second center for special education of challenged children, was set up in 1998 on HUL Plantations in South India. It has 17 children. The focus is same as that of Ankur.  d) Anbagam: This is another day care center (Center of Love), which was started in 2003 in south India plantations. It takes care of 11 children. Besides medical care and meals, they too are being taught skills such that they can become self-reliant and pursue elementary studies.   

Objectives of Project Shakti Amma: Enhancing livelihoods through Project Shakti. Project Shakti is an initiative to financially empower rural women and create livelihood opportunities for them. It provides a regular income stream for the Shakti entrepreneurs and their families.

Project Shakti: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) to tap this market conceived of Project Shakti. This project was started in 2001 with the aim of increasing the company’s rural distribution reach as well as providing rural women with income-generating opportunities. This is a case where the social goals are helping achieve business goals.

 The recruitment of a Shakti Entrepreneur or ShaktiAmma (SA) begins with the executives of HUL identifying the uncovered village. There presentative of the company meets the panchayat and the village head and identify the woman who they believe will be suitable as a SA. After training she is asked to put up Rs 20,000 as investment which is used to buy products for selling. The products are then sold door-to-door or through petty shops at home. On an average a Shakti Amma makes a 10%margin on the products she sells.

Enhancing livelihoods through Project Shakti: Shakti is an initiative to financially empower rural women and create livelihood opportunities for them. It provides a regular income stream for the Shakti entrepreneurs and their families. HUL has trained thousands of women in villages across India to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and make them financially independent. These women entrepreneurs (called Shakti Ammas) have been trained on basic tenets of distribution management and familiarisation with the Company’s products. HUL has a team of rural sales promoters (RSP’s) who coach and help Shakti Ammas in managing their business. This includes help in business basics and troubleshooting as well as coaching in softer skills of negotiation and communication which enable them to run their business effectively.

Project Shakti business model: With the urban market saturated, FMCG Companies are now targeting the rural markets. In spite of the income imbalance between urban and rural India, rural holds great potential since 70% of India's population lives there. Due to the recent government measures like waiver of lone, national rural employment guarantee scheme and increasing minimum support price, disposable income in rural India has been rapidly increasing. However, rural markets present their own sets of problems. These include poor infrastructure, dispersed settlements, lack of education and a virtually non-existent medium for communication. Furthermore, retailers cannot be present in all the centres as many of them are so small that it makes them economically unfeasible. HUL to tap this market conceived of Project Shakti. This project was started in 2001 with the aim of increasing the company's rural distribution reach as well as

providing rural women with income-generating opportunities. This is a case where the social goals are helping achieve business goals. The recruitment of a Shakti Entrepreneur or Shakti Amma (SA) begins with the executives of HUL identifying the uncovered village. The representative of the company meets the panchayat and the village head and identify the woman who they believe will be suitable as a SA. After training she is asked to put up Rs 20,000 as investment which is used to buy products for selling. The products are then sold door-to-door or through petty shops at home. On an average a Shakti Amma makes a 10% margin on the products she sells. An initiative which helps support Project Shakti is the Shakti Vani programme. Under this programme, trained communicators visit schools and village congregations to drive messages on sanitation, good hygiene practices and women empowerment. This serves as a rural communication vehicle and helps the SA in their sales. The main advantage of the Shakti programme for HUL is having more feet on the ground. Shakti Ammas are able to reach far flung areas, which were economically unviable for the company to tap on its own, besides being a brand ambassador for the company. Moreover, the company has ready consumers in the SAs who become users of the products besides selling them. Although the company has been successful in the initiative and has been scaling up, it faces problems from time to time for which it comes up with innovative solutions. For example, a problem faced by HUL was that the SAs were more inclined to stay at home and sell rather than going from door to door since there is a stigma attached to direct selling. Moreover, men were not liable to go to a woman's house and buy products. The company countered this problem by hosting Shakti Days. Here an artificial market place was created with music and promotion and the ladies were able to sell their products in a few hours without encountering any stigma or bias. This model has been the growth driver for HUL and presently about half of HUL’s FMCG sales come from rural market. The Shakti network at the end of 2008 was 45,000 Ammas covering 100,000+ villages across 15 states reaching 3 m homes. The long-term aim of the company is to have 100,000 Ammas covering 500,000 villages and reaching 600 m people. We feel that with this initiative, HUL has been successful in maintaining its distribution reach

advantage over its competitors. This programme will help provide HUL with a growing customer base which will benefit the company for years to come.

Impact: The Shakti Entrepreneurs are the women micro-enterprise business-dealers of the HUL, who are selected and appointed from among the poorer women SHGs through a well-defined process. They are expected to represent the company technically but in reality they are the “true saviours unto themselves” as also their families and village community as a whole. It is in this context that the word “empowerment” acquires relevance and significance in the transformation as well as upliftment of these BOP women of the rural society. Choice of persons Opportunity to obtain business dealership of the HUL without any initial deposit, and a profit of 6-11% over the business investment of the group (wholesale, retail business benefit – 3%) will be available to only some persons. The requirements are as follows. The person should be a woman. She can be a SHG member or an individual. She should not have a retail outlet. She should be willing to visit homes. The woman nominee should be able to make an initial investment of at least Rs. 10,000. She should be educated with reputation in the village. She should possess self confidence, business interest and capability to maintain cordial relations with other DWACRA groups in the neighbouring villages located within a radius of three to four kilometres distance from her own village. Choice of the villages Only uncovered villages will be approached for choosing a person for appointment as SE

Conclusion: Project Shakti is enabling families to live with dignity and in better health & hygiene, education of the children and an overall betterment in living standerds. It creates a win-win partnership between HUL and the rural consumeres for mutual benefit and growth.