Doing Well by Doing Good—Strategizing for the Bottom of the Pyramid in India

Unilever’s name in India was Hindustan Lever (HLL). Project Shakti was one of the seven new initiatives to tap the vast pool of potential customers in non-urban India (Amann, Steger, and Ionescu-Somers 2006a, Ionescu-Somers, Steger, and Amann 2006). Shakti meant “strength” or “power” and was an ambitious plan to stimulate new demand at the lower end of the market by creating a self-sustaining cycle of business growth through people growth. HLL planned to develop a win-win partnership with rural self-help groups (SHGs) by helping them access microcredit, buy HLL products, and sell them in their villages. If successful, the initiative would create hundreds of jobs, train new entrepreneurs, and extend HLL’s distribution reach to the most inaccessible of India’s rural villages. Penetrating the informal sector in this way was a potentially risky endeavor; furthermore, was it really the company’s role to develop rural areas? At that time, the management had been concerned about potential channel conflicts with the existing, successful distribution network. Coordinating with governmental and NGO partners would be a key success factor, but this also brought its own complexities. Training mostly illiterate women in sales and promotion techniques was a major challenge, although the payback in terms of new markets and wealth creation was potentially enormous.