Informist, Thursday, Jul. 31, 2025

By Anand JC

NEW DELHI – Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Thursday said it intends to bring certain prestige brands from the global stable led by its parent company Unilever Plc to India. The company is working to bring these core brands run by Unilever to the centre of its portfolio, the company management told analysts in a post-earnings conference call.

"We acknowledge that you need more than just a few big core brands, which is why we have a core future core market makers mindset, especially for BnW (beauty and wellness) segment," the company said. For example, it has brought in brands such as Novology, Simple, Beauty Planet in India, which are serving niche demands in the wedding and beauty categories, the company management said.

On its recent acquisitions in India, the company said that the combined portfolio of Oziva and Minimalist is INR 10 billion. The company's beauty and wellness segment currently has an INR 20 billion portfolio. "Oziva's footprint even now is still by large digital and digital first. Offline expansion will be done at a later point in time when we start seeing more traction and more penetration for such business and categories across the country," the management said.

Elaborating on its strategy for tea operations in India, Brooke Bond Red Label maker said that its decision not to pass on the higher tea prices fully to consumers in the June quarter helped support its high single-digit underlying sales growth and a positive underlying volume growth for its tea portfolio. This growth in its tea business, along with double-digit growth in its coffee portfolio, drove the growth of HUL's foods segment, the company said.

"... especially tea, compared to the growth levels we have spoken about in the last few quarters. You see a step up in the tea (business) overall growth and that has helped the food growth overall," HUL said.

RURAL VS URBAN

The fast-moving consumer goods major reiterated that growth in rural areas has continued to outpace urban areas. Rural areas trumped urban areas, including in sales through e-commerce channels, the company said.

"Disposable income purge is what had really hurt the rural population, where cumulative inflation was nowhere getting compensated by the income level increase which we had seen (in the last few years)," HUL said. With retail inflation easing in recent quarters, along with government support and a promising monsoon, disposable incomes in rural areas have improved.

HORLICKS STRATEGY

Horlicks, part of its lifestyle nutrition business, has seen its business decline in the last few quarters. "The business is still declining in the quarter, but lesser. But we've seen improvement sequentially in the business for Horlicks. The job going forward for us, we had called out we are relaunching Horlicks with a more sharper product proposition," HUL said.

The company is working on relaunching the portfolio of Horlicks by the end of the year. "We have a brand that's very popular and used quite deeply in the south and east (India). It's very important that we don't alienate the consumers," the company said.

HUL is working on a strategy to promote large packs, which are particularly used in southern India, as customers' preferences there are tilted towards smaller packs.

Boost, the other beverage part of its lifestyle nutrition business, has shown signs of promise in the June quarter, the management said.

The FMCG bellwether reported its June quarter financials early Thursday. Its net profit for the period was INR 27.3 billion on revenues of INR 159.3 billion. Thursday, its shares closed 3.4% higher on the National Stock Exchange at INR 2,521.20. End

Edited by Saji George Titus

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