Transforming HUL into an intelligent enterprise

India has witnessed rapid digitisation with internet penetration increasing from 15% to over 50% in 7 years and consumers spending over 3 hours on digital media daily. The digital economy is estimated to reach $1Tn by 2030, supported by the influx of new-age startups, the acceleration of B2B, e-Commerce, and the rise of new ecosystems, powered by the Digital India Initiative.

Our vision for digital transformation is to drive incremental growth by disintermediating consumer & customer interactions through increased personalisation.

HUL has been on a digital transformation journey with its industry defining program called Re-imagine HUL that has purported the mantra of rapid experimentation over the years.

It has enabled us to seamlessly connect our consumer, customer and operation ecosystems leading to a superior experience for all our stakeholders.

As we digitise our operations and consumer journeys, we continue to invest in right talent, create new partnerships, as well as an agile operating structure to accelerate this journey.

Arun Neelakantan Chief Digital Officer

anuradha-razdan

Creating personalised and
omni-channel journeys

Personalisation
Building a content ecosystem
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence
Augmented Reality

Automated and intelligent media
planning and deployment 

We have enhanced our media capabilities to select the right mix of media to reach our target audience. Our underlying data lake, automated deployment, and analytics allow us to optimise spends in real time leading to greater media efficiency.

We have also amplified new-age capabilities with a dedicated influencer management team. A roster of over 700 influencers, right partnerships, and scaled deployment across languages have resulted in us achieving full-funnel visibility, higher brand lift with over 80% of brands improving on consumer mind measures as well as cost savings.

Riding digital commerce tailwinds

Digital commerce is a critical channel for growth. With rising digital contributions, it is vital to build new technology that enables business models to serve changing shopper habits.

We have specialised teams to drive both efficiencies and effectiveness in digital commerce. Automated campaign management, platform specific content, and optimised spend management have improved our return on advertising spends while reducing cost.

In parallel, we are also scaling up D2C ecosystems of our brands. Our D2C business has grown to over 10 brand.com websites serving consumers across more than 19,000 pin codes in the country.

Leveraging data and analytics

We have continued to enrich our HUL data lake with granular and relevant internal, syndicated and external data sources across our customer, consumer and operational ecosystems.

Our state-of-the-art data democratisation platform Chanakya, is a critical enabler for quick decision making across our organisation.

Creating superior, on-trend products with speed

To meet the dynamic demands of the digital era, we established an Agile Innovation Hub a few years ago.

The Hub focuses on trend spotting, digital prototyping, and rapid deployment, leading to a substantial reduction in the time taken from idea generation to the launch of a new product.

50+

innovations launched in the market aided by the Agile Innovation Hub.

Enhancing B2B Commerce

Our in-house e-B2B digital application, Shikhar, has a strong footprint in capturing demand. It is modernising the traditional sales value chain by enabling real-time information sharing with retailers. We have successfully onboarded over 1.3 million stores to date.

We are leveraging Shikhar’s functionalities to reduce the launch time of innovations within General Trade. We are also accelerating retailers’ self-adoption and order frequency with superior analytics, best-in-class app features, and innovative marketing campaigns.

Reimagining the
digital supply chain 

Our Supply Chain is undergoing a transformation to drive agility and resilience for our business, along with a re-organisation in our asset and cost base and a focus on sustainable growth.

Our 'Nerve Center' approach is an end-to-end integration of the four verticals of Plan, Source, Make and Deliver to enable real-time information flow and intelligent decision making to unlock business value.

World Economic Forum recognised Industry 4.0 factories

Our Sonepat factory became the second HUL factory after Dapada, which was recognised by the World Economic Forum as an Industrial Lighthouse.

Empowering individuals to thrive in the digital age

Underlying this digital transformation, is a holistic organisation wide change management approach. Digital is no longer restricted to each function nor is it an experiment. It is the very way of working in HUL.

Did you know?

The Lighthouse status is bestowed on best-in-class factories worldwide that adopt Industry 4.0 technologies at scale to drive sustained improvements in productivity, quality, service, cost, and environmental impact.

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Personalisation

Personalisation enables us to identify consumer groups based on their attributes, generate personalised content, and deploy it across the right platforms.

Our consumer data stack allows us to segment consumers and target them effectively at scale. Personalised deployment across brands has resulted in increased click-through rates (over 10x) and savings in advertising efficiency.

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Building a content ecosystem

We are building a content ecosystem to deliver personalised content to each consumer segment. By leveraging new-age technology, AI capabilities, and consumer insights we are equipped to curate personalised and versatile content.

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Leveraging Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most potent tools that we are using to reshape consumer experience. By creating beautytech solutions such as skin regime recommendations, our brands Lakmē, Pond's and TRESemmé are able to dial up premiumisation and consumer love. In the space of nutritech, Horlicks is able to deliver personalised health diagnostic reports which enhances consumer engagement and drives up equity for us as an expert nutrition brand.

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Augmented Reality

In the ever-evolving landscape of consumer engagement, our brands are constantly seeking innovative ways to connect with consumers meaningfully such as delivering a personalised experience tailored to their preferences, through interactive content formats. For our brand Kissan, we introduced a first-of-its-kind on-pack augmented reality-based activation, which allows our consumers to connect to the world of our farmers. By scanning a QR code at the back of the pack, consumers can get a chance to experience the 'farm to fork' journey through interactive games.

Did you know?

The winner of the game gets to visit Sahyadri farms and experience the farming journey from plating to harvesting to storage.