Hindustan Unilever enjoys a Market Maker Heritage with a history of creating categories like moisturisers, shampoos, conditioners, soaps and colour cosmetics making us India’s largest Beauty & Personal Care (BPC) business.

With the rapidly evolving beauty landscape, we continued on our journey of transforming our portfolio aimed at progressing beyond meeting consumer needs, with aspirational and purposeful brands. In pursuit of this vision, we concentrated our efforts on:

Future-fit innovations

Superior products

Channels of the future

Re-imagining mental reach

Future-proof supply chain

The beauty, personal care and wellbeing ecosystem is evolving with the rise of affluent India. We are contemporising our brands and continually re-inventing and innovating to meet the aspirations and needs of our consumers.




Madhusudhan Rao Executive Director, Beauty and Personal Care

anuradha-razdan

Review of the year

Our BPC portfolio, spanning across 7 categories, grew by 2% in FY 2023-24, driven by volume. Due to its discretionary nature, this category is more susceptible to the impact of macro-economic factors.

After a period of significant inflation, commodity prices deflated during the year and we passed on the benefits of this lower cost to our consumers in the form of price drops and promotions. Mass demand was impacted by high cumulative inflation over the last three years and below-par agricultural output due to uneven monsoons.

₹22,165 Cr

Revenue

₹5,802 Cr

EBIT

26%

Segment Margin

Our premium portfolio within Hair Care and Skin Care led growth for the category.
Bodywash accelerated its growth momentum and grew competitively at high double digits.
Clinic plus is now a ₹ 2,000 crore brand, having moved up the ladder during the financial year.

Growing the core

Cognisant of changing consumer needs, we continue to contemporise our core brands, keeping them relevant, accessible, aspirational, and purposeful while expanding them into new demand spaces and formats of the future

Strengthening our core

Clinic Plus has achieved one of its highest ever brand power scores through effective communication and has now become a ₹2,000 crore brand for HUL. Sunsilk forayed into the post-wash hair serum segment through the launch of the Super Shine Serum, with a product, packaging and communication that won with consumers. Closeup has expanded its offerings by introducing new variants in the naturals category. These are made with a 95% natural origin formula to cater to the naturals demand within the category.

Contemporising our core

We have led significant transformations across our key brands like Lakmē and Vaseline, revamping them by refreshing product, packaging, communication and innovating into new demand spaces and formats. This keeps them aspirational and relevant for our evolving consumers.

Purpose at our heart

Glow & Lovely was relaunched with a sharper claim led proposition and modernised packaging. The brand also innovated to present consumers with new formats of the likes of powder finish Crème and sunscreen. Through our Glow & Lovely Careers foundation, we continue to equip women with the tools they need to succeed through training, career counselling, and online programmes, fostering their financial independence.

Doubling down on WiMI

Leveraging our Winning in Many Indias (WiMI) strategy, we deaverage the country basis consumer preferences and climate conditions to curate a sharply targeted portfolio. We design products specifically for local preferences, enabling us to better address the needs of diverse consumer cohorts. For instance, Lux and Lifebuoy have curated winning products and tailored propositions by region, addressing local consumer needs.

Market making & premiumisation

With changing lifestyles, increasing per-capita income, exposure to global trends through social media, and a growing emphasis on self-care and wellness, this segment is witnessing a transformational shift.

With the myriad brands straddling the price-benefit pyramid, our strong equity and access to Unilever brands, we are well-placed to win in this market.

Skin Care and
Colour Cosmetics
Hair Care
Skin Cleansing
Premium Beauty Business Unit

Channels of the future

In 2023, we set-up 'Beauty-verse' to redefine the beauty landscape and excel in Channels of the Future, blurring the lines between Sales and Marketing for a seamless buying experience. Our ambition is to lead every platform, deliver unparalleled consumer experiences, and pioneer with innovative launches at all beauty-shopper touchpoints to deliver market leading growth.

We continued to strengthen our content platform ‘BeBeautiful’, which educates consumers on their BPC needs, sharing hacks, highlighting trends and providing virtual try on makeup for a holistic, customised experience.

Building a greener future

BPC has taken its sustainability agenda to new heights by achieving 100% sachet recyclability in Hair Care. One of our key thrusts is having a circular plastic economy.

We have now commercially established post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic in rigid packs for large brands like Vaseline, TRESemmé and Sunsilk.

By introducing the slim cap in Glow & Lovely facewash, we also continued our progress towards innovative designs and new structures to reduce our virgin plastic consumption.

We are committed to responsibly sourcing palm oil and aim to be 100% No Deforestation, No Peat (NDP) compliant in India.

Did you know?

During the Clean Future Summit, 18 of our partners signed the ‘Climate Pledge’, demonstrating their commitment to a net zero journey.

Strengthening our authority for beauty

The Beauty Collective

The Beauty Collective, a first-of-its-kind immersive, innovative and collaborative event is helping HUL emerge as an authority on beauty.

The beauty consumer’s discovery and purchase behaviour has changed forever with the introduction of e-Commerce. We are transforming our approach to strategic partnerships with beauty portals and retailers. This was the genesis of the Beauty Collective which seeks to change the way beauty is perceived, understood, and marketed.

Lakmē Fashion Week

This season, at the Lakmē Fashion Week, we positioned our fashion-forward ethos at the forefront by introducing a compelling new campaign, #UnapologeticallyMÉ, to celebrate Indian women from diverse backgrounds who embrace fashion and beauty without reservations.

Our brands

Skin Cleansing

Hair Care

Skin Care & Colour Cosmetics

Oral Care

Deodorant and Male Toiletries

Health and Wellbeing

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We are pivoting our portfolio to develop the market for emerging demand spaces and formats with our leading premium beauty brands Vaseline, Lakmē, Pond's and Dove taking charge.

We have stepped up our innovation within this category, expanding into new on-trend demand spaces to meet the evolving needs of our consumers.

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We have ventured into on-trend, future formats like hair serums with exciting launches such as TRESemmé Ultra Shine Hair Serum while strengthening our presence in Hair Masks with a winning mix of Dove Hair Mask.

Indulekha, our naturals brand, refreshed its packaging to project mastery and reinforced its expertise, alongside expanding its portfolio by venturing into the Anti-Dandruff demand space with the launch of Indulekha Svetakutaja Shampoo & Oil.

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We are driving market development at two levels, upgrading from mass to premium bars with Dove and Pears and accelerating conversion to higher order benefits with Liquids - Bodywash and Intimate Hygiene.

We have strengthened the fundamentals on our premium brands, resulting in consistent penetration gains. Our bodywash segment has grown 4X in 4 years through dedicated market development efforts.

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Our Premium Beauty Business Unit (PBBU) which was incubated to address the digital-first niche, has had an exciting year. Three years since its incubation, this Unit now boasts of an Annualised Run Rate (ARR) of ₹100 crores and above.

We continue to scale up our PBBU brands through new offerings. For instance, we launched the Active Skin Barrier Care range in Simple, which is powered by ceramide boosters and hyaluronic acid to help restore a damaged skin barrier and soothe dry, sensitive skin.