Good morning, everyone. A very warm welcome to the HUL Capital Market Day 2024. I'm Shilpa Kedia, Head of IR and Group Controller, HUL. We are delighted to host you here today at our beautiful campus and online. Hope the portfolio experience zones that you saw earlier today gave you a good insight on how we at HUL are unlocking a billion aspirations with our winning portfolio. Participants joining us virtually can experience the same through the virtual booths. Before we move ahead, let's go through the safety briefing, please.
Hi, everyone. We would like to begin with a safety briefing. We are committed to an injury-free organization to ensure that no one gets hurt. We also ensure that our premises are safe so that nothing goes wrong. The facility is equipped to handle emergencies, and this briefing is to familiarize you with the same. In case of any incident requiring evacuation, the emergency siren will sound. Do not panic and evacuate the premises in an orderly manner through the emergency exit door. The emergency staircase leads to the outside open space on the ground floor of the building. You are requested to assemble at the nearest assembly point, swipe your card at the electronic card reader, and stand in queue for further instructions from the emergency response team. If you have visitors, please ensure you escort them to the designated area marked for visitors.
Once the all-clear is received from the emergency response team, the proceedings will resume. Thank you.
We've crafted a very comprehensive and exciting agenda for you today. But before we start, I would like to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement for the good order's sake. Moving on to the agenda, we'll start our day with Mr. Rohit Jawa, CEO and Managing Director, who will share our strategic vision. We'll then move on to the presentation on business divisions by our business heads, with a break in between for lunch. Business division sessions will be followed by a breakout session in a round-robin format to deep dive into our three key modes: research and development, customer development, and supply chain. We will end our day with our CFO, Mr. Ritesh Tiwari, who will cover the financial growth model. Profiles of our distinguished guests are available in the notepad shared with you all.
Please note that we'll have a 10-minute Q&A at the end of each business session, as well as the breakout sessions. Rohit and Ritesh will also take questions at the end after the CFO presentation. For each Q&A session, you have an option to ask the question in the room or online. There is a QR code in the notepad on the agenda page where you can scan and post your question. Teams who are joining us online can click on the Q&A icon at the bottom of your page to post questions for us. We look forward to a very enriching and stimulating day with all of you throughout the day. With this, may I please request our CEO and Managing Director, Rohit Jawa, to please come to the stage.
Good morning. Welcome to Hindustan Unilever's campus. Welcome, all of you. I know, I hope you've had an exciting morning. We have had some really nice innovation showcase from our divisions, and I hope you enjoyed it. We put our best foot forward, exciting new things that we are putting out in the market as we speak, or in fact, in the months ahead. So let me first start by welcoming you all and also mentioning that I've been in this role for about under 18 months, and this is a very important juncture for the company, for the country, and indeed for Unilever. Unilever, our parent company, had its capital markets just a week back, where Hein unveiled the new strategic vision of the Unilever Group.
One of the top priorities that he really made very, very clear was doubling down on India, which is indeed an important moment for us as well, because we are the second largest market and what's the most exciting time in the consumer goods market to be in India. For me as well, over the last year, year and a half that I've been in the business, been around the markets, met with all our people and consumers, dealt with issues, run the operational cycle, have a high level of conviction on where we want to go from here onwards after what's been a great track record in the years past. Let me just give you a sense of how I will use the next 40, 45 minutes to tell you the story of where we're coming from, where we're going.
We'll speak to our strengths, because HUL has been in this country for 90 years. We're the largest FMCG business in the country with a great track record. And there are a few important essential strengths that we want to build on and never forget. I'll then speak to what's happening in the country, the opportunity that there is for all of us. The India story is not new to most of you. But what role can HUL play in this epic moment when the country is inflecting and going to the next phase of its growth in the next decade? And consequent to that, I will then introduce the specific choices we are making as a team to succeed in the decade ahead, including some of the specific areas and how we win will bring them to life also for you. And of course, we have the whole day.
My entire team is here, and we will bring the divisional strategies to life, and we'll bring our functional heads to life as well, where you can engage with our leaders through the day. So thank you again for being here. And I will then move on to first talking about why we feel so blessed in the country. So after 91 odd years in this country, we've got a blessed position. We have 85% of our business in leading positions in the market. We have 90 odd brands and many more to come that are more than 1,000 crores. And that means they're of national scale, some as big as 10,000 crores, Surf Excel to name. So we have a very, very good portfolio and a strong track record over the last decade of growing at about 8%, roughly well-balanced between volume and value, depending on the year.
So a strong foundation from where to build the next phase. Even if you look a little bit more recently, in the years past, the three, four years, which have been full of a lot of change. We've had COVID, which was a big, big inflection, a massive inflation period, and then a deflation period, and now normalizing to some selective inflation. So it's been a yo-yo that the country's gone through, the company has gone through, and we managed in this period to also be resilient, robust, competitive. We've grown our turnover by 1.3 times and our profit roughly in line. What's most important is the test of success of companies like ours who have been in the business for almost a century is to be an all-weather company, continue to succeed in all conditions.
The best way to measure that is our relative success, which is through market shares. Over the last three, four years, we've, of course, gained a lot of market share in the first two years of inflation. Importantly, this time, because we've been through the cycle before, we managed to hold that and, in fact, edge it up in the years that have followed, including even more recently. What gives us this sense of strength? I want to speak to four important strengths of HUL we should never forget. The first one is that we are a company of deep consumer intimacy. Our people spend something like thousands of hours, and I believe the number for HUL for last year, consumer contacts, was a cumulative man hours of 26,000 man hours.
But importantly, it's our ability to stay close to the consumer and to evolve our brands and manifest them over years and keep them relevant and keep them evolving. Here's an example of our brand, Surf Excel. It's already stated to be close to INR 10,000 crore, which is the size of many companies in consumer goods in India this year. And it's a brand that's moved from being the brand that represented the pragmatic, smart choice, Lalita Ji in the 1970s, to a brand that actually gave mothers the permission to let their kids be dirty. Because if you're dirty, you do something good, then stains are good. And there was Surf Excel to rescue all the time and to contradict an image and approach.
And then in 2020, more recently, where the brand's been the one to drive the growth of the liquid segment as consumers have nuclearized, looking for convenience, buying more washing machines, moving to new homes. And the brand now is helping the housewives and househusbands to run their lives more conveniently with, of course, the liquids and soon in the market to have capsules. A second important strength that I'd like to spend a moment on is our innovation culture. We have had a tradition of R&D since the '60s. In fact, where you are used to be the original R&D campus when I joined the company. So we've had a strong research ethic ethos in our culture. We have now had close to almost 800 odd scientists. We have the world's Unilever's two largest global centers in India, in Mumbai and in Bangalore.
And just to take a couple of examples where we've actually made markets, which is really our culture, is a work on immunity boost tea, which is already a INR 400 crore-plus platform, and the work we did on micro sheets, both of which are proprietary technologies, building categories that didn't exist before those technologies were used to make those markets. So proprietary technology is how we create value, how we create barriers to competitive attack, how we create real value for our consumers. And this remains an important core strength that we will build further on. We understand that India is not one India. There are many Indias, people at different levels of affordability. And it's very important to the Indian consumer that whatever we do, it doesn't matter how good, it has to have the right value. And the value notion varies from segment to segment.
It is very important that we make products that are premium, give premium experiences, but yet are accessible and affordable in pricing. We follow the approach of really designing products to value or what really consumer values and then working out our cost and supply chain to meet that cost brief. An example of that in the recent times is the launch of our second brand, Rin, in the liquid laundry market. We launched Surf Excel Liquid 2019 or thereabouts. It is built a very nice penetration-based business. We realize that there are actually lots of washing machines where the number of loads on liquids are still few. Therefore, there is an opportunity to democratize the use of liquids. That is why we entered our second brand, Rin, just this year. It is already now leading the value segment in laundry liquids in the country.
And that's quite a remarkable success under a very, very strong brand name, Rin. Our third strength that we see as absolutely essential to how we do business is to play the portfolio. This is an example of hair. We play all price points, all segments, all demand spaces, especially in categories you want to lead. And in a category like hair care, we've been leading this for many years. We've now hit the highest share ever, actually, in the recent past, with three times of relative market share. And we serve consumers at all price points and benefit segments. To give an example, we are the company that also sells INR 1 sachet with Clinic Plus that helps mothers make their girls strong and their hair stronger.
We also sell brands like Sunsilk, Dove, TRESemmé, Indulekha, and Love Beauty and Planet, going all the way to 250 price index from 60. Now we are also going to be introducing Nexxus, a masstige product brand from a US stable into the market, which is going to be selling a bottle at almost INR 1,500. This targets a select niche segment of consumers who value the salon-like expertise that Nexxus, the brand, will bring to them. We serve in a market as big as hair, all price and benefit segments. That remains a playbook that we follow in all categories where we lead. Our core strengths are really backed by our four distinctive moats. This will be brought to life, but we very, very much draw a source of competitive advantage from this.
Our network, we sell 75 billion units through 28 factories with 50 odd contract manufacturers. We reach 9 million outlets, almost every outlet in the country, 3 million of which we reach directly every month. We have some of the most best-in-class costs when it comes to supply chain and overheads when it comes to the industry. We have a frugal mindset. We look for value, and we keep making sure our business is efficient. We have an emerging strength in data and technology. We are the first GCC, by the way, in the country to have built our massive center now in Bangalore, which is in the top five centers in Bangalore across sectors. That gives us a co-location advantage where we are now using UniOps, or what we call UniOps in the company, as a source of technology.
Some of the products that we have really brought to life in the market that are really building a new barrier, a new platform like Shikhar, which is an app that I'll talk to you a little bit about, the eB2B app in our CD system. That is an amazing platform that we'll be keeping building on. Yet we are cognizant that not everything is done. We have a few more things to address structurally in the decade ahead. We've done well on premiumization. If you look at aggregate HUL's, more than a third of our business is more than 120 index. Yet when we look under the bonnet, it's driven a lot by home care and personal care that have a higher than fair share in the premium segment.
But there's more work to be done to fill the opportunity we see in foods and refreshment and specifically in beauty and well-being. So getting our portfolio more premium in beauty and well-being in foods is clearly a call to action that we are taking quite seriously to heart in the period ahead. The second is a very big investment acquisition we made in the GSK lifestyle nutrition business. We're proud of what we've done over the last four years in driving the brands to their highest brand power. We have added 600-700 basis points of penetration through more distribution. Our value share is at the highest ever. And we also now focus and lean in on the premium end of the nutrition business where the adult science range, which is doing well.
Yet we still have a job to do to get our category growth, category consumption to grow. And we are working very hard to increase the relevance through taste and through specialization. And that remains a job to be done in the period ahead. Let me at this stage take a pause and start to look forward. So clearly, a company that is building on its strengths, deepening its competitive moats. And yet we are at this point of history in the country's growth and the CPG market, where we've got to see where the market is going to grow and how do we shape our own role in the India of tomorrow. What's the India of tomorrow? Let me just spend a little bit of time on three or four meta themes that are driving the economy and the future FMCG market in the country.
Number one is the fact that the country has clearly grown in prosperity and income over the last many years, and as we know, our GDP growths are solid at 6%, 7%. We expect India to go from fifth largest to the third largest economy in the world. That means that the path of growing prosperity and income at all levels will continue through thick and thin. This is a secular trend. We also see the market going from a sort of a classic pyramid to a narrow pyramid to becoming a diamond, which means that the affluent, the aspirational classes, and the strivers will all have an opportunity to improve their consumption and their quality of life. This is a big driver of the CPG market in the country as well. Secondly, we are a young country.
The average age in 2030 will be less than 32, which means that we have more young consumers setting up new homes, building new families, going to new cities, and therefore buying new categories and increasing their consumption, especially as they get new jobs, and we have one of the largest workforces in the world. This means clearly the market is going to go through inflection as these consumers come in and start becoming real consumers. Third, the country is more digital, more social, which means how we build brands is clearly changing. We all know the numbers: a billion internet subscribers, 200 million buying online, a large portion of consumer spending spent on social media, roughly half, and a lot of them following influencers, so really, how you create mental and physical availability is changing.
The manifestation of that is consumers are discovering brands online, yet they are buying them offline. So there is an omnichannel behavior. And others say not just what brands say is becoming an important part of the marketing model. All of this means that the consumer goods market in the country is going to see an inflection. If you look forward next 10 years, and if India's income goes from something like $2,500 per capita to $4,500, which is roughly the per capita income of Indonesia, and you look at categories in Indonesia, Thailand, China, and other markets just purely in our region or even beyond, and this is a curve that we fit across all our categories by looking at this.
We see clearly all our categories that we play in are going to go through an inflection, something between two to four times bigger market sizes, because that's what's happened. This pattern will repeat in India as well. Therefore, really, the opportunity of consumer growth is immense in the period ahead. The question is, looking at this great opportunity, great moment in the country's history, what role can HUL play? The largest deeply penetrated consumer goods company in the country with what's good for India is good for HUL ethos. Our job is to make sure that we make the aspirations of every Indian who is now being able to open up a phone and look at the quality of life she or he wants to lead, whether they're in rural areas or they're in urban areas or wherever. The information is now democratized.
Everybody has the same dream or a dream to have a better quality of life. They know what good looks like. So every consumer in India wants to improve, have their families have a better quality of life. Only one company under the sun, Unilever, has the ability to translate these dreams to reality by making premium experiences, premium products available, accessible at an affordable price at arm's length, be it on their mobile or their shop next door or the Kirana merchant or a big supermarket. Only we have the reach, the network, and the cost system and the infrastructure to be able to make this happen at scale. Let me now show you a video that will bring this dream to life for you before we move ahead on what is it that we will do to really make this a tangible reality in the decade ahead.
Let's have the video now, please. Thank you. We are a refreshing wake-up call. We are a habit. We are the evangelists for bathroom singing. And we are the answer to every mother's dilemma. For 90 years, we have been many things to many millions of Indians every day. What will the next 90 be? We're 90, and yet we're nimble and innovative like the new India. We are on the fast lane to empower the dreams of a new India, dreams that are being realized at the speed of thought. When the country aspires for extraordinary growth, we swipe right on out-of-the-box solutions to deliver. The world progresses, standing on the shoulders of the young. We celebrate them, empower them, and encourage them. We are mindful of the planet because we have a responsibility to leave it in a better shape than we are in.
We constantly create the new. That is how we create a future we believe in. We introduce things that people never knew were needed because commitment never takes a break. We are proud to be BFFs with a 21st-century woman because she has shattered every glass ceiling and all stereotypes. We are here for healthy habits and healthier values. We are fortunate enough to do our bit for the less fortunate. Restlessness is a virtue because every new idea is born from being restless with a status quo to create better and live better. We are 90 years old and full of surprises. That's because our DNA is young and our minds are buzzing with ideas, creating benchmarks and landmarks for a country called India. We are marching towards fulfilling the aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians. We are HUL.
So this is really our dream is to be as relevant as we were last 90 years and last decade for our consumers who are changing very, very fast and going to the future very, very fast. Let me at this stage take a little bit of a moment to show you our strategy, and I will double-click on this. And let me first start by the strategy on one page. And I just want to take you through this a little bit slowly so that you can follow me after this. So we are guided by financial ambition to have double-digit EPS growth driven mainly by top line in the decade ahead. And we have three pillars of our strategy founded by two fundamental foundational bases.
Our first focus choice is to focus on our portfolio in a specific way that addresses the opportunity of the future, and I'll take you through that. We want to excel in five specific demand drivers that are going to make the difference of winning and losing in the period ahead, and we'll accelerate our modes and take them to the next level and make them even more future-fit. The two foundational bases of our strategy are our belief and commitment to sustainability, where we are going to be, as a company, focusing on four specific verticals where we have highest impact: climate, nature, plastics, and livelihood. I'll take you through all of this and double-click in the next few 10, 20-odd minutes. I want to just spend a moment on culture.
Our values remain strong and deep and unchanging, but we want to emphasize four specific behaviors as we step into the future. Number one is to build on our culture of caring deeply for our consumers, customers, for performance, and also for having a deep owner's mindset and caring for the business exactly like an owner. It's about really being ruthless in choice-making because we have lots of opportunities in a market as big and complex as this, but we want to do a few things that can move the needle and stick to them year after year. Number three, we have to be three steps ahead. We have to shape the future to build the categories. When we have done that in the past, we have reaped the dividends of our investments being consistent and focused on building markets and being ahead in capability.
Finally, it's about execution excellence. It's about making sure we show up every day in every outlet and every mobile phone with excellence because only then will all of these choices become truly real and turn into the revenue that we want. I'm going to now go one by one into the three pillars of the strategy and sustainability and spend some time also on the talent and the organization piece as we go forward. On focus, we are now looking at our portfolio in a segmented manner, and I'll just take a little bit of time to give you a sense of what I mean. So if you take our 60,000-odd crores and you organize it by three broad blocks, at the bottom left is what we'd call core. This is less than half our business. This is a very important foundational part of our business.
It's brands like Clinic Plus, to take their example, one rupee sachet. This is what gives us a chassis. We get to every outlet on the base. We serve every consumer every day. This is the source of our 9 to 10 household strength and penetration. Very important part of our portfolio. We must keep contemporary and healthy, though we will only intend to grow roughly in line with the market because markets are actually moving up, as you know from what I mentioned a short while ago. Future core and market makers represent the other half or more than the half of the market. Future core are brands and formats that are really at the sweet spot of premiumization in the country today. And I don't mean they have to be extremely unreachable. A brand like Pond's can offer something at INR 30-INR 40 rupees that is still an upgrade.
A brand like Dove can offer a sachet at INR 2. But this is the part of the portfolio which has got our brands that have got the highest ability to upgrade, formats like bottles, brands like Dove, to take the shampoo example. Market makers are a smaller part of the balance business, a segment of our portfolio where we are building new segments of the future and a very important source of growth because they're growing much faster than the market. And our building share on that is basically going to guarantee a future and a profitable source of value creation. These are segments like, for instance, hair serums, again, sticking to the hair example, and are growing quite fast. So we are seeing our business now in three distinct segments, each of them very important, each of them requiring a specific playbook to compete and win.
We need to now segment as we go forward, and you'll see that showing up in all of the divisional presentations also. I'm going to double-click on future core segment just to give you a greater flavor of what we mean by that. We have 10 brands currently in the company of our 50 that represent the sweet spot of premiumization. Why? Because they're all big, more than 1,000-odd crores. They're all premium. They have high desirability and high performance based on our UBS Unmissable Brand Superiority scores, and they are therefore seen as aspirational brands. And therefore, they have the highest ability to be available and offer a premium experience and product at an accessible and affordable price and therefore give it scale.
So we're going to lean in on a certain playbook that will basically make this a source of our big value creation and our growth journey going forward. Now coming to the excellence pillar, given the fact that the market is now changing, the way brands need to be built is also transforming. We have to build new capabilities and be absolutely the best in class in the market with it. So I want to spend time on each of the five demand drivers that we're leaning in on: unmissable brand superiority, multi-year market making, social-first demand generation, challenge of the future, and winning in many Indias now taken to the next level but not forgetting what we've already built. Let me double-click on each of these one by one.
On Unmissable Brand Superiority, this is a proprietary tool that we have built across Unilever and in HUL using 21 metrics that are now modeled for different categories that gives us the weights and therefore gives us the direction of what to look at and how much to emphasize across the six P's of product, pack, proposition, promotion, price, and place, and by actually diagnosing the brand on a very frequent basis, we can be absolutely on the top of the game and make sure that the brand is superior at all touch points. Pond's is an example of a brand which is now well above all its competitive benchmarks and is absolutely superior on Unmissable Brand Superiority.
That brand, as you know, has done very well over the last decade, has doubled in size driven by its premium portfolio of bright beauty, and we see a very, very big future for this brand going forward. 85% of our business has UBS score or Unmissable Brand Superiority score, which is now fully validated and factualized, higher or more superior than its benchmark competitor, which gives us a really great base to start from in the next decade. The second demand driver is multi-year market making. Why is it important? Because when we stack and compound the benefits of new segment creation, we get a high share of that segment, and the segment translates to a very big prize size of prize. An example is Home Care Liquids. Home Care Liquids is already close to INR 3,000 crore.
That's a sizable business, and we have only yet not fully penetrated, and washing machine penetration is going to go further. Homes are going to be built. Many more homes are going to be built. So there's a lot of roadmap for Home Care Liquids, for instance. Similarly, we are taking a focus on six long-term bets: premium face, premium hair, body wash, Home Care Liquids, as I mentioned, condiments, and mini meals. And we are also going to start scaling our two global divisions of prestige and well-being from next year. So on prestige beauty, we will bring our brands to market. They are existing already in a small way, but we start scaling up from next year, our global prestige beauty brands. And on well-being, we already have Oziva in the market that's doing well.
We have an interest and a strategic stake in well-being nutrition, and we'll bring Liquid I.V., which has been a blockbuster success in the U.S., with an Indianized global mix to the market next year. So we are now very, very committed and serious about these two vectors. They've done very well for Unilever globally, and we expect to see a similar roadmap in the future as well. All this is already INR 7,000 crores in scale, so it's already large, growing at high double digits, and we'll have a huge roadmap of opportunity and growth going forward. Social-first demand generation, the third important demand driver. I mentioned to you how many hours each consumer is spending on social media today. I mean, it doesn't matter whether you're rural, a small town, urban, or wherever that consumer is. Of course, a lot of the media has moved to digital.
We have, as a company, also moved, as of last count, 40% of our total media spend to digital. Not all of this digital spend is social media. A large part of that is, and now we have also taken a committed leadership position on social media. We have close to almost a roster of 8,000 influencers, which will expand further. We are building a strong network of vernacular influencers because local language is really critical in social media, and we have a very high share of voice already measured, and we intend to remain a leader in social media creation and leveraging the new media method of many, many conversations from one to many as we go forward in the next decade. I want to give you a use case of this by moving to an example in action.
Now, this is a case of we've taken one of our premium brands, and this is not for HUL as a whole, just to be clear. This is a use case of one premium beauty brand where before, if we had used just conventional media planning, we would have got a very high TV-based media plan. What we've now done over the last several quarters is we built an in-house media planning tool. It is a proprietary tool. It's done by our people inside HUL building. It's a bespoke tool. We can put category weights. We can put profit numbers. We use category-specific data to customize for different business groups or consumer groups, and the ability to do this with technology has made what would have been five days to five hours.
And by applying a more sophisticated in-house tool on this plan, for instance, we were able to generate a plan that was more effective in its reach and in its ability to move behavior into sales. But we meant that we had to increase the weights of OTT, social, and digital video at the cost of TV. And we are not doing this for every brand, and this is not for every brand. This is actually a real use case for one brand where, by applying this sophisticated tool, we are able to in-house generate a plan that's way more effective and therefore returns higher marketing investment than it would have done in the normal way. So that's another proprietary competitive capability that we're building in-house. Our fourth driver is challenge of the future. We have said this before that consumers are, of course, modernizing. They're changing how they shop.
They're omnichannel in nature. But of course, the modern trade contribution and the organized trade contribution in the country is increasing. Under 20% of our businesses with organized players. And e-commerce is also growing, although still small, but the growth rates are high. Now, clearly, the way we won in general trade is not the way we win in these two challenges of the future. In modern trade, we are blessed to have an above-average share index, which means as modern trade grows, it's good for us. But we are now beginning to build capability to build brands and store to drive growth of the category by actually using tools that we have got from our Unilever stable so that we can help the customers grow the size of the price. In e-commerce, we are nuanced about how we approach this.
The key differentiation is technology because it's complex, it's different. We have beauty.com, Marketplace.com, and QuickCommerce.com, and all of them require different treatment because they have different shopping missions, and using technology now to make this happen at scale, and Arun will also cover this in some detail in his session, and finally, in Winning in Many Indias, since 2014, we built this amazing strength, very difficult to copy, of localizing our mixes to many parts of the country. To take an example, like tea, we have something like eight blends to approach different clusters with different competitive sets and consumer habits. Now, we are not stopping there. We are, in fact, taking WIMI to the next level. Eight blends, we localize it further, for instance, in the case of tea, and our brands across our divisions are doing that.
But not just are we going to go deep on WIMI. We are also going to start looking at top cities. The top 100 cities in the country have close to almost a third contribution to the market. We're going to make sure that we invest differently in these big cities because a lot of the GDP is concentrated in a small set of towns. And this means a different omnichannel reach model, a different physical reach model where we are going to specialize our routes to market like Beauty Pro and for food, the food specialty stores, and chemists that actually work for both foods and beauty. So we will start differentiating how we access and the service mix in these big cities because the size of the prize and the opportunity and the profit pool is quite high. So we keep taking our WIMI to the next level.
Let me now spend a few minutes on our Accelerate pillar. Accelerate is about taking our competitive moats and making them firmer and future-fit. I'll double-click on supply chain, traditional trade, science and technology, and on our cost program, net productivity program we call Symphony. In supply chain, we are already well on the way to optimize the network by actually making multi-format factories, bringing them closer to demand, and Yogesh will cover that in his session as well. We've digitized for better asset efficiency. Great evidence of that is that two of our factories in the country are now a part of the World Economic Forum list, which is a select set of factories, so they're really world-class: Dapada, Sonepat, and Motukam.
And we, in fact, now go to the next level, addressing complexity of the new market through autonomous operations, so dark operations, and actually building a direct-to-store model to address direct delivery in big cities through what we call Samadhan. We are now taking, not resting on our laurels. We're taking our fabulous supply chain capability to the next level, leveraging technology. We're also doing that in our distributor trade. We have built a really good asset called Shikhar. It's an eB2B app. Of 3 million outlets, we cover directly. 1.4 million of them have adopted this app already. 70% of them, so a million, more than a million transact monthly. Half our sales are going through this pipe. We have, therefore, a daily, almost a second-based relationship with our retailers. Therefore, they can order when they want, off-shopping hours.
The key driver of growth through this platform is assortment. It gives us an opportunity to serve our customers by offering them tools of trade, training, engaging with them. This platform, frankly, has got a huge potential to be monetized in the future. We are going to make sure that this keeps building and has a very high engagement stickiness with our Kirana customers, which remains a very, very important part of our growth agenda. On science, as I mentioned to you, R&D and innovation is our lifeblood. We are inherently a technology-led company. We have now, in the year ahead, looking at three big science platforms. Vibhav will cover this in some detail, but just to take a couple of these examples, they're not just pies in the sky. We have already manifested them in market.
The launch of WIMI floor cleaners recently in the market using a patented probiotic technology, using next-gen material capability with Stratos that you'll hear more from in the R&D section. We also are building further our innovation capability through Agile Innovation Hubs for transporting by crawling data. Advanced Manufacturing Center, in fact, it is in this campus and one in Bangalore for rapid prototyping, so we can scale that across 28 factories very fast, and building new capabilities like new fragrance creation house, a global investment of which India will also be a part. On productivity, we are a frugal company. We're constantly looking at how to get more efficient. We have a proven method called Symphony. It looks at end-to-end productivity and all savings at all levels, whether it be supply chain control costs on one end or media roaming on the other end.
We intend to accelerate this, add more fuel to this so that we can drive our growth forward, and this is, of course, by using technology to find more opportunity or running a business in a more efficient way going forward. On sustainability, we continue staying the path of our track record of being one of the leading sustainability voices and practitioners in the country. On climate, we have now got these four pillars: climate, nature, plastics, and livelihoods. This helps us to narrow our effort to be inch-wide and mile-deep to make an impact on net zero by working on our scope two and three with our home care suppliers, by actually helping our tea growers in Northeast and Assam, for instance, to make their yields better through more regenerative-type agriculture, by working with our cities to make plastics circular.
In fact, we now just recently signed a partnership agreement with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to take our source code of a circular economy waste, we call it, to other cities. In livelihood terms, we, of course, want to make sure that people in a value chain have a decent livelihood. We have, of course, Shakti, a program that impacts 200,000 women in the top 200,000 villages. We are also doing that with Prabhat, which is a program that is impacting communities around our big factories. That program already has touched 10 million lives in the last 10 years. We are going to expand that and make this deeper in the years to follow. A moment or two on our culture and organization. I spoke about culture a little while ago.
Since I've taken over, we have not been waiting to have this session. We've been moving forward. We've been building our innovation capacity. You saw that in the roadshows just a while back in the morning. We have, of course, tried to also make our organization way more agile and more focused. We have taken the call some quarters back to split BPC business into two divisions, focused divisions of more than 10,000 crores each: personal care and beauty and well-being, which gives them more focus, more dedication. We are now working on dedicated routes to market for these two businesses because Foods and B&W, for instance, does have specific shopping missions and specific channels that require a 100% dedicated view. We have started doing that already. We have pruned our portfolio further.
We are a very focused business, but we have now divested Staples, our water business, and decided to separate ice cream so we can focus on few things and do them really well. We have made sure that our top roles in the company, and you'll see many leaders in action, have a very high talented value fit. And we have, in the spirit of good governance and being one of the leading corporate citizens of the country, we've also refreshed our board with four new independent directors who basically make sure that the interests of minority shareholders are protected. And this is the continuity of our spirit of governance going forward. The question that I'm sure all of us have is, how can a company of 60,000 crores remain nimble, fast, agile? How can this elephant dance?
How can it really react to this market that's complex, changing quite fast, different kinds of consumer sets from affluent to aspirers to strivers? What do we do across so many clusters and countries? The fact is, the way we will go forward is basically we have now started to build a very, very deep expertise within our four business units or divisions, with each of them having a mission to build a company of sorts on the actual platform so we can balance, focus, and scale well where they actually are competing for their consumer, their consumer needs, their competitive set, the business models that work for them appropriately, and not getting diffused by the averages of averages. So we have now four very, very tightly knit scale divisions, more than 10,000-12,000 crores in Beauty and Wellbeing that's shaping the beauty market.
You'll hear more from Arun after me. 10,000 crores and above in personal care business that's pioneering category development through technology, through market making. A home care business that's 40% or 37% of our business, a great success in the last 10 years by accelerating market making, premiumization, and continues to be on that solid mission going forward. Our foods business, our foods and refreshment business, which is sharper portfolio choices and building an India for India portfolio because food is very local. Unilever gets it, we get it. It's really about building that specific, best, or both global and local portfolio in foods that can actually reap the potential of this massive market foods market unlock that is yet to happen in this market.
So, we very, very much want to operate through these four big divisions with Ice Cream separating with really a right balance of focus and scale so that things can get done quickly and things can be absolutely customized and fit to purpose and not be averaged. So in summary, I want to just close this all up by giving you a summary of summary or the essence of what is really on our minds for the decade ahead. Number one, our big three transformative shifts, things that we really have to make effort to change to remain competitive and sharp and winning in the future ahead. One is more premiumization of our portfolio with Unmissable brands, Unmissable brands, diagnostically, factually Unmissable brands measured to be superior against their benchmark every quarter, but premiumized so that especially in beauty and foods where we have headspace, more work to be done.
Accelerate the channels of the future, modern trade, e-commerce because shoppers are moving in that direction, although our Kirana and our general trade will always remain very, very big. Learn and become the best at social-first demand generation with a pulse on the culture that converts, gets people to love our brands as we've done them in the decades past. Yet the three things we should never forget, foundational to our success. We have to keep our core portfolio very healthy, fresh, contemporary, and relevant. Our brands that serve the mass of the market in rural, in small towns, in lower-income households will remain the first priority to make sure they remain healthy, remain vibrant. If they are vibrant and healthy, we will be able to build on that base. We will continue to be the employer of choice as we are this year, in fact, across sectors.
Talent and people is what makes business. So people will remain our priority number one. And therefore, our teams have a big task cut out for them to make sure that we remain as competitive on our employer brand as we have been despite the changing talent landscape in the years ahead. And finally, supply chain and traditional trade. These are our moats. Only we can get to every corner of this country through our 28 factories and our contract manufacturers, collaborative manufacturing network at a cost and agility through our nano factories. Those are large factories that nobody else can. It's a source of a competitive advantage. And so is our distributor trade strength, getting to 3 million outlets, 90% value-weighted distribution beyond. Nobody comes close. And we intend to keep that edge through technology and through making sure our focus on Kirana-centric and distributor-inclusive model remains steadfast.
Finally, when in doubt, we look back into what defines us, what's our purpose as a company. Hindustan Unilever Limited: what is good for India is good for HUL, and that will always remain the touchstone on which we will always measure our decisions. This is really the fundamental premise of our existence, reasons for why we are successful, and reason why we remain successful in this amazing market and amazing country for the decade to come, so with this, I bring my session to a close. Thank you for your patience.
I hope you got a good sense of our strengths, our history, our recent track record, the opportunity we see, how we have a special place in that opportunity, and how we are going to leverage that by making very clear choices on our portfolio, on demand drivers, our competitive moats without forgetting what makes us famous, which is our purpose or what's good for India is good for HUL. Thank you very much. A very warm welcome to the Capital Markets Day, everyone. Thank you, Shilpa, and thank you, Rohit, for kicking off the Capital Markets Day. I'm going to take you through the beauty and well-being section for the Capital Markets Day. I must say that as I stand here, I stand here starting from a position of strength. Why do I say that?
I think the first thing I just want all of us to recognize is even today, we are the number one beauty company in India. And the reason we are the number one beauty company in India is because we have the market leadership in almost all the big categories we operate in: skin care, hair care, color cosmetics, many times over our key rival competitor for many, many years that have gone by. And as I was reflecting and I thought about it, what has helped us reach here? I think it is the market leadership, which has been built on very, very strong fundamentals and the immense love the consumers have for our very strong brands. It is no surprise that three out of five most loved brands in any category that we operate in are HUL our brands.
With our products, we are reaching 300 out of the 330 million households in the country at least once annually. Top of mind recall of any brand in any category, we are leading that conversation, and I think that has been possible because we have kept our ear to the ground, our ear to the ground because we want to listen to the consumers. We want to understand what are their unmet needs, and over the decades, we have tried to fulfill them over and over again and created this competitive moat for ourselves. When we look back, we have indeed built the beauty habits of this country. Whether we talk about the first hair conditioner where we told women, "Of course, you can get sleek-looking hair. You can cut the frizz." That was HUL. Or the first liquid lipstick in this country, that was Lakmé.
Or the first brightening cream, incidentally, Glow & Lovely will finish 50 years next year, and we are the largest skincare brand with Glow & Lovely in the country today. First CC cream, again, a crossover between makeup and skincare. These are some of the beauty habits that we have built over the past few decades. However, given this consumer intimacy, which is at the heart of everything we do at HUL, which Rohit referred to, we also know that the Indian beauty consumer is changing, so let me talk about what is the shift which is happening with this consumer, with this shopper in the ecosystem, and how B&W is going to bring it all together to win with the consumer going forward for decades, and I'm going to talk to you through a few of those.
The first one, and Rohit alluded to that in his presentation, is India is becoming prosperous. It is the India story in the decade to come. And what is happening with that specifically in B&W? We spoke about Winning in Many Indias 2.0, where we are looking at strivers, the aspirers, the affluents, and the affluent plus. And we know where these cohorts are living. We know what these cohorts are buying. And within that, we have prioritized two of the cohorts, and that is what we are going to focus on. Both ends of the spectrum, there is going to be immense opportunity for B&W. At the affluent and affluent plus end, it is going to be all about premiumization. What does that mean? The consumers are going to seek better products, seek more premium products, seek more formats, seek more regimens.
The value creation over there is going to come from premiumizing at the top end. The aspirers, everyone wants to be a better version of themselves. These aspiring cohorts are the ones who are going to adopt new regimes. They're going to move from one product regime to four product regimes to be the best version of themselves, whether it's in skincare, or it's in haircare, or it's in color cosmetics. This is where we need to develop the market. We need to make sure we grow the penetration. And this is where the volume is going to come from. So as HUL, we are going to be in a unique position to make sure that we are appropriating at the affluent end and the aspiring segment as well. The second big shift, and a lot has been said about it.
There was a world before the oncoming of social media, and there's a world once social media has arrived. I'm just going to talk to you from a beauty lens. What does it mean? We know there are lots of people on social media, but what is happening is people across the spectrum, rural, urban, are spending average. Mind you, it's average of two and a half hours and above. In some of the cohorts that we're looking at, it is going to as high as seven hours, eight hours. What are they consuming when they are on social media specifically for beauty? They are looking at what are the latest ingredients. They are looking at what are the key opinion formers, the makeup artists, the stylists, the celebrities, people like my friends. What are they talking about beauty? That is shaping their beauty understanding.
And that is what is driving not just what they purchase, but where they purchase. So the numbers on the bottom of the slide, if you see, eight out of ten brands on beauty are being discovered on social media. Yeah? And also, we know two out of three purchase occasions are also being influenced by social media. So this becomes a very, very important pivot that we need to take cognizance of and ensure that we are leading the game on that. The third shift, retail landscape is changing. I spoke about the onslaught of information which the shoppers and the consumers are getting on social media. They are also seeking regimens. They are seeking convenience. They are seeking experience in where they are shopping. It is no surprise to be the best versions of themselves.
They are looking at specialist channels which can give them greater assortment, more choice. And of course, the number of brands as a result of it in future channels are exploding. On an average, health and beauty is going to have two times or three times the number of choice of brands versus traditional trade. And we need to be cognizant of that as we shape the agenda for the future. Now, all these three shifts are leading to a decadal shift in the beauty ecosystem. And I'm going to just spend a minute on it. What do we mean by that? If we just go 20 years back, what were we seeing? We were seeing a conversation which is one to many, and Rohit alluded to that. One being the manufacturer, many being a lot of consumers aggregated at lowest common denominator. What did it entail?
It happened so that when we were one to many, we were talking about a lot of product. My product does this, and we were cascading that message to a lot of people, and it resulted in almost a single product regime in India specifically for many, many years in the past, so even today, if you ask me, on an average, our regimes vis-à-vis the more developed markets are far lower, so on an average, we use lesser number of products at an occasion, and that is something which we are seeing a tectonic shift, and why is that happening? Because the ecosystem has shifted from one to many to many to many. Now, who are these many on the left side? Of course, these are the brands who are living in the social world. But these are also the key opinion formers. These are also the influencers.
These are also the stylists. These are also the makeup artists. These are also the voice of authority, and these are also our friends and family who are recommending products, so these are the many cohorts who are then talking to similar cohorts who associate with them, so there is a many-to-many conversation happening, which is resulting in this entire ecosystem thriving, and as a result, you will see in the last 20 years, regimens exploding. If I was to give you a number at the affluent and super affluent or affluent plus, the regimens have gone up from one and a half on an average to five products per usage occasion, and that's the kind of shift that we are looking at, and within the backdrop of this decadal shift, what do we as HUL want to do? Our vision?
We want to be the beauty shapers for India. And how are we going to do that? Innovative category and format development, building purpose and science and desire on our very big, very, very iconic brands, and shaping the beauty conversations. These are the three North Stars which are really driving my team and I to ensure that we make HUL Beauty the beauty shaper beacon for the decades to come. And this leads me to the three pillars which we are going to focus on to deliver on that vision. First, we are going to focus on the portfolio for beauty. I am a firm believer in having a fantastic portfolio and great products which serve the consumer needs and aspirations in a country like ours. So that's going to be our first priority. The second, excel in modern reach models.
I just spoke about how there is a decadal shift which is happening in beauty marketing. We have been leading the marketing for beauty in the country. We want to make sure we are leading with this shift as well for the next decades to come. And last but not the least, how are we going to really accelerate a curated route to market for beauty? Because we know the channels where the consumer is shopping for beauty are different. The needs of the shoppers are different. And we will make sure that we reach this shopper in a very, very curated fashion, delivering on what she's seeking. So let me double-click first on focusing on the portfolio. Three things I'm going to talk about. First and foremost, elevating our core. This is our strong suit.
We are going to make sure that we play to our strengths, and this is the first thing we are going to do. The second is turbocharged market making. Why is it critical? It is critical because my consumer is moving from a one-to-two product regime to a five-to-seven product regime at different cohort cuts that you see. So this is critical for us to do in BMW. And last but not the least, Rohit showed that we have a job to be done on premiumization specifically in BMW, and we are calling out the portfolio that we need to bring in for affluent and affluent plus as the burning platform that we are going to focus on as we speak.
I must tell you, a lot of work that I'm going to show you is already in market because we've decided on this vision almost now six to eight months ago. And for the last few months, we've been trying to make sure that we are landing a lot of what you see already in the market. Elevating our core, unmissable brand superiority, holistic superiority versus eyeball competitor. And I'm very happy to share with you that 90% of my turnover today, 90% of my turnover today in key categories is superior holistically to my eyeball competitor. Yeah? In the last 12 months, we have 30-plus patents that we have launched via our products in the market. To name a few, if you look at Vaseline, some of you would have seen the innovation boots that has the GAP technology.
You would have looked at Novology that has a patented HNR3 technology. And I'm going to show you some of the proof points of why we believe these are the best technologies to deliver superior experience to the consumers and shoppers in the market. And last but not the least, new formats and capabilities. 50-plus new formats and capabilities with the help from supply chain, R&D are in the market already over the last 12 months. And we are only from here going to double down on these as we go forward. I'm going to pause for six seconds because for six seconds, you will see on the left and right how our products are really superior versus eyeball competitors.
Silk Press, a premium tier that we have launched on TRESemmé already, is premium and to our core, but at the same time, superior to the lead eyeball competitor in a salon in making sure that the hair after using Silk Press is aligned for even 100 days despite the number of washes you go through at home. So women go to the salons to get Botox and straightening treatments. For the women in the room who understand the pain of it, you don't have to do that. Use this product. You will get straight hair which will last for 100 days. The second one, of course, is the sunscreen technology. Clearly, the sunscreen technology that we have in our products is superior in both how we test and how we deliver UV protection versus any competitor in the market that we are seeing.
Of course, there is a job to be done in the market because not a lot of people in the country are using sunscreens. So this is the superior technology, which is the bedrock of our products, which leads to the holistic superiority that we are talking about. This is something that we will ensure we keep doubling down on. The third thing that I want to talk about is science and desire. This is a before-after chart. What I'm showing you is before. So if you would have maybe come a couple of years ago, we were showing charts like these because at that time, the market was singular. We were talking about a single product. We were talking about simple benefits. What we need to do today, given the way the consumer has shifted, is to elevate the science and desire in our brands.
I'm going to show you just focus on Vaseline and Pond's. Yeah? This is what it was in the past, and this is what is in the market already today. That's the journey that we have traveled already. If you see Vaseline in the previous charts, it is winter season in India. We were talking about a body lotion with very basic ingredients giving good nourishment. But we have ensured now Vaseline is not just talking winter body lotion, but it is talking superior sensory, patented GAP technology, and delightful experience across demand spaces, which is going to the consumer. Similarly, you would have seen Pond's, a brand which is very, very strong in the market. We've built it on delivering superior dark spot correction in the country for the consumers. But we were talking single product. If you see today, we are talking regimen.
And it ties back to the first shift that I spoke about. India is becoming more affluent. Indians are seeking more regimes. And we are not behind any developing or developed market, especially at the affluent end when we are talking extended regimes. So Pond's is going to take the charge and start building regimes at scale. At this juncture, I'm just going to show you two pieces of content. And if we can have the AV, please, which brings this to life. कियारा की अल्टीमेट ब्राइट स्किन का राज। पोंड्स ब्राइट ब्यूटी रेंज का सबसे पावरफुल ब्राइटनिंग इंग्रेडिएंट, नाया सोरसनॉल। स्टेप वन: पोंड्स ब्राइट ब्यूटी फेस वॉश, डेड स्किन सेल्स हटाए। स्टेप टू: सीरम, दाग घटाए तीन दिन में। स्टेप थ्री: सीरम क्रीम, दे स्पॉट क्लियर ब्राइट स्किन। अब ब्राइट ब्यूटी रेंज के साथ अल्टीमेट ब्राइट स्किन है पॉसिबल। मिरेकल्स हैपन। क्यों करें शाइन?
Jab kar sakte ho gloss. New TRESemmé Lamella Gloss. I'm gloss it up. Revolutionary Lamella Technology. Har ek baal ko kare laminate. Achieve glossy hair. Look at, look at, look at all my gloss. Achieve gloss, ab ghar pe. New TRESemmé Lamella Gloss. Moving on from the pillar of elevating our big core brands, I want to draw attention to market making. And why is this super, super critical? If you look at the large market in an aggregate, we do operate in mature categories. We operate in haircare, but we operate in shampoos, where of course penetration is almost universal. But look at the chart at the bottom. These are some of the segments where the penetration headroom growth is 5x, 6x, 10x versus where we are today. And this diagonal line is a continuum. This is zero, and that's 100.
So we've just plotted it to show you if any hair wash is sitting at almost 95% penetration. We have a lot of segments as we deliver to these regimes where there is opportunity to grow. So basis this, we've identified six spaces. Yeah, Rohit talked about at an aggregate level. Now I'm going to sharpen it down to what are the six that we are going to drive in BMW. First, face cleansing. Second, light moisturizers. We are a very, very hot and humid country. We are seeing the consumers when they're moving out. They are seeking sensory which are lighter, which are not draggy, which do not cause oiliness on your face when you apply them. So creams, but with lighter sensory. Serums and treatments. Efficacy, potency is the name of the game.
So when you have millions of shoppers browsing on social media, they are checking, are you efficacious? Do you have the potency? Will you deliver? And serums as a format is going to become very big given it is potency bottled in a small bottle. And that's how the consumers are seeing it, and that's what we are going to deliver. Sun care. Again, hot country, UV is bad. Huge job to be done as market leaders to drive adoption of sunscreen. And the penetration on sunscreen is sub-10% if I aggregate. Of course, if we cut and we know across cohorts what it is, we are going to have different playbooks for it. But meta thought drive market development of sunscreen. De-seasonalizing body. We do not any longer want to just get the countrymen and women to use lotions on body in winter.
We want body care to be a year-long phenomenon. That's what we are going to do in de-seasonalizing. Last but not the least, masstige. In masstige, we are talking about beauty brands. We are talking about the prestige portfolio, and we are talking about well-being and nutrition and VMS. I'm going to touch upon it a little later in my slides. Now, you may ask me, okay, these are the six bets. Where are you going to focus on building these six bets? Here is where I will tell you that we are the market leaders, and we are going to focus across the spectrum in India. What HUL can do is to ensure that with our ecosystem, with our route to market, with our portfolios, we can cater to the affluent India, and we can cater to the aspiring India.
I'm going to take you through one example on serums. How are we approaching it? First and foremost, do we have the right portfolio to deliver to the affluent India, which is seeking higher-order benefits, more ingredients, more potency in ingredients, better sensories? So you have Simple and Lakmé doing that job for affluent India. The Lakmé Vitamin C Serum is not any other Vitamin C serum in the market. It is a 10% Vitamin C serum, very, very difficult to stabilize serums at that inclusion levels. But our fantastic R&D teams have done that, and a property for antioxidation, which is very differentiated from all the other ingredient-led serums in the market. If I speak to aspiring India, this is where we have the penetration job. This is where we need to democratize. This is where we need to go to the demand spaces, which are more universal.
Pond's and Glow & Lovely are going to do that job. We are going to ensure that we premiumize with the affluent because that's where the value creation, and we do market development with the aspirers because that's where the delta volume is going to come from. That's the flywheel that we are going to deploy across the six bets that we've called out. Now, this will beg a question. So you have the portfolio. What about the deployment playbooks? I know there was a lot of conversation in the morning during the booth sessions as well. I must share with you that we are very, very clear that the playbook for affluent India is going to be different from aspiring India because we know that the drivers for affluent India are very different from the drivers for aspiring India.
Headline thought, what are the drivers for affluent India for driving preference and choice and purchase decision? First, does a voice of authority endorse what you are saying? Yeah, because the affluent consumer is more discerning. They want to research for themselves, and then they want to decide. Second, do we have advocacy of people who have used it, people who are similar to me? Is the advocacy coming through? And third, am I going to be available in specialized channels which allow for trial, which allow for experience, and of course, convenience? So these are the three we are going to focus on: a playbook which focuses on driving authority, advocacy, and a specialized selling experience for affluent India for the portfolio. For the aspirers, we are very good at this.
We need to do market deployment, a market development deployment at scale, very, very persuasive communication, highly scalable sampling plans, and providing the segments and formats at an accessible price. So these are the two machines which are going to run in parallel for us to ensure that we realize the potential of the six big bets. We are already, if in aggregate, if I was to tell you, almost a 2,000-crore business on the six big bets that I spoke about in a very short period of time. And we believe with these playbooks, we are going to really double down and turbocharge market making in the category. This brings me to the last and the final feather in the cap on the portfolio. And this is the newest addition to our portfolio, which is the mass tea plus segment. We've kept our ear to the ground.
We have been experimenting. We have been listening, and we've identified five spaces where we feel affluent India is going to move, and affluent India is going to buy better. First, clean beauty. LBP and Simple, those brands were in incubation, and we are now scaling them up. They are clean beauty. They are kind to the skin and hair, but they are also efficacious. That's a point of difference on the clean beauty brands. Professional haircare. Again, aspirers, we have a great portfolio. Affluent, we need to make sure that we have a professional brand born in salons coming and giving transformative experience as a stylist in a salon would give to the consumers. And Nexxus is the next big bet that we are taking to strengthen our hair portfolio even further. Therapeutic and derma care. A lot of ingredient-focused brands in the market. Why have we taken time?
We have launched Novology, and we have made it with the top 10 dermats in the country. It has the best of patents which Unilever has to offer. It is busting myths about ingredient-led brands. And I'm going to show you in the next slide just a flavor of how we are building this brand in the market. Well-being. Very, very critical to B&W because as we see, what we eat and ingest has an equal amount of impact on how we look and feel. And that is why the lines in well-being and beauty are blurring, which is why we have the portfolio on Oziva. We have launches which are going around beauty supplements. What are the things that you ingest? And on top of it, we are bringing Liquid I.V. early next year in the market to tap into this market.
We are going to double down on this segment and make sure that we build a competitive moat around here. And last but not the least, prestige is going to be a bolt-on. We have very strong brands in our global prestige portfolio. Dermalogica is already here, and a couple of more brands will come into the market in 2025. With that, I'm just going to show you two more pieces of content. How is Nexxus going to come into the market? And most importantly, why we believe Novology is the right derma care brand for the affluent plus. I got game for days, and you know I drop the rock. It goes on and on, and the shine don't stop. When the shine don't stop. I got game for days, and you know I drop the rock. It goes on and on, and the shine don't stop.
Try to make a 24-karat diamond. When the shine don't stop, don't stop the clock, 'cause you know what time it is. Try to make a 24-karat diamond. Try to make a 24-karat diamond. Try to make a 24. Try to make a 24. Try to make a 24-karat diamond. Nexxus. Try to make a 24-karat diamond. Don't stop the clock, 'cause you know what time it is. Nexxus. Exfoliation is the answer to dark spots, right? Wrong. Exfoliation works only on the surface without stopping the melanin production at the source. Novology, it's created with next-gen HNR3 technology that targets dark spots at source for brighter, even skin from week four. Novology, do right by your skin. This brings me to the close of my portfolio section, but we do believe this is the most enviable beauty portfolio in the country.
You look at the portfolio straddling from aspirers to affluent plus. You look at the portfolio covering all price tiers, covering all demand spaces, covering all formats, and this has been a differentiating factor and strength for the many past decades and will continue to be a differentiator and strength for India to be the leading beauty company. That brings me to the second pillar very quickly because once we have the portfolio, we need to make sure that we have the right omnichannel reach models, and how are we going to excel at it given we know the media landscape is seeing a massive shift? Four simple things. Content that converts. Social rich media mix.
It's nothing but saying if your shopper and consumer is on social, how are you going to make sure you have method to the madness in where you are putting the money to reach them? Beauty advocacy. Super critical. I referred to it earlier because that is what the beauty shopper and consumer are seeking. And last but not the least, content is king in beauty. How are we going to deploy AI and tech to really deliver that content which our consumers want? First one. I have a firm belief that content which is rooted in culture converts. That is what at Unilever we call content that converts. And I would like to tell you that for the last 25 years, we have our iconic brands who've rooted themselves in culture.
Be it Lakmé Fashion Week, 25 years next March shaping the fashion into beauty conversation in the country without any break. Let's take Dove. Iconic brand taking a point of view in culture. It is no surprise. It is one of our largest brands in BPC in India. So can we have the content that converts rooted in culture piece for Dove, please? கருப்பி. நான்தாங்க. சின்ன வயசுல இருந்தே என்னை கருப்பின்னு கிண்டல் பண்ணுவாங்க. I don't remember exactly, but मेरी फैमिली में कोई तो था जिसने बोला, "इसके लिए लड़का ढूंढना बड़ी मुश्किल होगी," क्योंकि लड़कों को क्या चाहिए? चोखे आटे जैसा गोरा रंग। और इसका रंग तो गेहूं है। What they say, Vitesh.
বাড়িতে যারা আসতেন, যাদের আমাকে এমনি সময় দারুণ লাগতো, সম্বন্ধের কথা উঠতেই তাদের মনে হতে শুরু করল, "আমি বড্ড মেয়েটি আর গোল।" How I hated Sundays as that's the day I would be meeting, oh no, rather paraded in front of those boys. जैसे कोई नुमाइश लगी हो। I started to rebel and started calling myself a TOD. A thing on display. And that is something which I don't want my daughter, or for that matter, any other daughter to go through. My daughter is a media professional. She has a master's degree in environmental sciences and sustainability. Wherever she goes, she just lights up the room. वो चांदनी भी है और चंडालनी भी है। கணக்கு வழக்குல படு சாமர்த்தியம். பேச்சுல அப்படி ஒரு பக்குவம்.
আমার মেয়ের পছন্দ অপছন্দের বিষয়ে যদি জানতে চান, আমি ১০০ কথা বলতে পারি। But if you are going to ask me about if she's tall or thin, পটল জেরা চোখ কিনা, ঘন কালো চুল কিনা, আমি একটা কথাও বলবো না। She's my daughter, and I will not let her get added to cart. Still interested? Still interested? Still interested? Still interested? It's trying to break the intergenerational trauma of mothers and daughters going through a slightly difficult process. And that is what really makes our consumers fall in love with our brands over and over and over again. If I move to, you have the content, but how do we really make sure that we are integrating social media as a process? And it is not something that we are doing on the side. Rohit referred to it again.
We have Sangam, which is an in-house tool, and we know now with the playbooks that we have what is the mix of digital and social for the affluent which works, and what is the mix for aspiring for digital and social which works. In 2024 itself, BMW, HUL, the digital spends are already ahead of TV. If you would have asked maybe 10 years ago, would this happen? I don't think many of us in the room would have said that, but that is something which has already happened, and this is a playbook that we will fine-tune as we go along since we see the results coming through. The second one on this is a strong ecosystem because I spoke about how advocacy and influencing are becoming big.
We are already the number one beauty influencer network in the country, and we are partnering with voices of authority, be it publications, be it industry experts, to build competitive moats in this space. Last but not the least, AI and tech is something that we will need to make content with agility, to make content which can really wow us, and these are some of the AI-generated creatives which the team has deployed for Lakmé Fashion Week, and I must tell you, the engagement rates on these have been fabulous, so this is something that we are already doing. We are already on the journey, and we want to build this as a core capability for ourselves at HUL Beauty.
As a sneak peek, I'm now going to introduce you to Tai, the first AI assistant stylist from TRESemmé, which we are launching in India very, very soon at the scan of a barcode from every bottle. Each one of us in this room can access Tai, the tips, tricks, information for having great hair days as if we've just spoken to a stylist. Can we have the AV, please? Hi beauties, welcome to the Talk to Tai experience. I'm Tai, the world's first AI-powered hair styling assistant built from a mix of pro stylist secrets, editor recos, influencer know-how, and 70-plus years of beauty brilliance so that you can get those salon tips, personalized product picks, hacks, and inspo whenever and wherever you need them. I can't wait to chat with you. Coming soon to a QR code near you on our bottles.
And that brings me to our last pillar and the most critical one. As we set out on this transformation journey to be beauty shapers, how are we going to accelerate the physical reach for beauty? What does this mean simply? Stepping up desire and stepping up availability of our great products at every touchpoint where the shopper is going. I spoke a lot about what is the affluent shopper seeking. They're seeking regimens. They are seeking great experience, which brings us a click down. What do we need to do in the route to market which we are dedicating to beauty? Number one, increase our assortment. Number two, building brands in store. Let's treat the point of sale as a marketing effort, not just an availability effort. And that's the bedrock of what we are doing with our CD teams now.
And last but not the least, again, tech is going to play a big, big role. Product demos at the point of sale, tech stack deployment at the point of sale for better demand capture. With these principles, we are building a curated route to market for beauty in India, both for offline and online. When I talk about offline, this dedicated route to market will cover almost 70% of the stores which the LSM or higher LSMs or affluent plus are shopping in the country today. And the coverage of this will be close to 88 towns. Neal is going to speak more about it in his session as well. Online, again, a different route to market dedicated to beauty. 100% of our beauty.com customers are going to be serviced through this exclusive route to market, again in the service of the three principles that we are speaking about.
How can we really have better assortment, better regimes, make sure that we are building brands on platform in the online context? And this we believe will be the game changer as you put and bring the full picture together with portfolio, digital reach, and physical reach for beauty. What is the size of the prize? If we do all of this and the journey we have started, 90% of our delta growth in the next few years is going to come from the future-facing portfolios. What is this future-facing portfolio? Our premium portfolio, our market makers, the big bets that we've called out, that's the future-facing portfolio. This will translate into a 900 basis points shift in the composition of our portfolio today. And that we believe will enable us to be the beauty shapers of this country. We want to be the number one portfolio for beauty.
We want to be the number one mental reach model maker for beauty. We want to be number one in physical reach for beauty. We are HUL B&W. We are India's number one beauty company, and our best is yet to come. So thank you for listening and welcome to the age of beauty shapers. Thank you, Harman, for a dazzling presentation, if I may say. We'll open the floor now for Q&A. We'll start with the questions in the room. Abneesh, I can already see your hand up. And we'll follow it up with some questions from online, please. Yeah, thanks. My first question is on the US versus India. In the US, the new age beauty companies have taken market share from traditional companies. Do you think India will go the India way, or will it be the developed market?
We saw very weak results from a new age beauty company in Q2. Now, the aggression which you have shown today, of course, that looks very promising. But if I see social media influencer, Instagram, Reel, now if many companies are doing that, a lot of Korean companies are coming and they can really escape the huge ad budget requirement and the distribution muscle. So if it was that easy, why is the share of voice in your beauty business lower than company average? So one is, why was it lower last, say, five years? And five years down the line, do you see you and legacy companies, in fact, gaining market share from the new age beauty companies? So Abneesh, I'll try and answer your question in two parts. The first, I'm taking comparison to U.S., and do we see new age companies eating into legacy shares?
So that's the first question. And then I'll address the social media part of it, yeah? The first one I would say is India is at a different stage and age versus the U.S. We are not a very mature beauty market. Our penetration levels, and if you remember the chart I showed you, our penetration levels, barring a few categories in beauty, are not universal. They are at best sub-10%, 20%, at max 30%, and that's also in face washes. So we see a huge headroom to grow both at the end, which is at the market development end, which is mass products, premium products, and at the top end, because like I said, there are going to be two playbooks that will play out. At the top end, how can you premiumize faster? Because the adoption is faster.
At the lower end of the spectrum, how can you get more users to come in? Because the U.S., remember, is a more mature beauty market. I see an organization which has both of these portfolios at a very strong competitive advantage because that is going to give us tailwinds to grow both at the top end and do market making at the aspiring end. That's the first answer. The second question is on social media and share of voice, for example, your market share in beauty versus company average is much lower. Last five years, if we see the newest beauty companies have done well, there's no doubt on that. Now Korean brands, Japanese brands are coming into it. In fact, the competition is becoming more fierce. There is, of course, Reliance entering into its own beauty.
And of course, that will be more competitive. So in a more competitive world, how do you do better than what you have done in the past? So that was the key question. Okay. So first and foremost, I must say competition is good for any industry. Why is competition good? Because for a discretionary category like beauty, when more people are going to come in, there's going to be a lot more investment to develop the market. So that's the first part. The second part is why have we been underindexed on shares versus the rest of HUL? And I think we have very strong competitive moats in the mass and premium end of the market. And we do have a gap in mass segment, which we are now fast filling.
And that is why we have aggressive plans to ensure that we cover up for that gap and we premiumize much faster. The third is you spoke about there is a lot of Korean brands coming. There are a lot of players popping up every single day. And that is where we feel our competitive advantage. And what differentiates us is our consumer intimacy. A lot of brands which are coming today, they may not last an entire life cycle. We have brands in the portfolio which have lasted from 50-90 years. That's number one because we listen to the consumer. We make sure we have superior products, great technology, and great brand building so that we can have longevity of the brands which we put in. That's one. Second, we are monitoring trends very closely.
We know the trends, which part of the globe do the trends flow from for India, which is why we know whether a wave of, say, K-beauty will work better or eye beauty will work better or the beauty from the West will work better. So there is a method to the madness. So I can only say competition is good. It makes sure that a market which is underdeveloped develops much faster. But we need to ensure that our portfolio is based on sound fundamentals of what the consumer is seeking, which is the trend which is not going to die down, but it's a long-term secular trend which is going to grow, and then make sure we have brands in the portfolio which have longevity and a business model which is profitable.
Once we get into that value creation cycle, we believe we will be the most differentiated beauty player and the strongest beauty player in this country. Thank you. Yeah. We have a second question coming up from Vivek. Two questions. So first question is on the beauty and wellness. You mentioned in your presentation that the lines are blurring. But your presentation is much more, my impression is much more skewed towards beauty than wellness. Housing the two, let's say, why the lines are blurring and all of that. Do you think when you house these together, given your legacy in beauty, do you think you are doing enough justice on the wellness side? Because what we saw in the morning also, whether it's Oziva, for example, it was much more towards, again, the beauty side of things than the wellness. I would love to know your comments on that.
So if I was to break wellness as a market, it's a huge market where there are lots of, again, demand spaces which are focusing on, right? The portfolio that we have for wellness is the one where we are talking about an end goal being a better version of themselves, which means beauty is at the heart of the delivery system. Yeah? So to give you an example on Oziva, it's a vegan-first wellness brand, but the portfolio for all these brands, which is growing today and where the consumer is shifting, I want to have wellness products or ingestibles which give me stronger hair. I want to have capsules which can give me great skin. I want to drink up glutathione mixed in a glass, which will give me flawless skin.
So that's where what you put inside your body shows outside is where the marriage of beauty and wellness is. And we are going to be very focused on building a portfolio which focuses on this Venn diagram, yeah? Which is why when we talk Oziva and what you saw on Oziva, we are focusing on that. And when you see Liquid I.V., it is going to be focused on hydration. Because if you go and meet any dermat or any doctor, the first thing they will tell you, your skin is dry because you're not hydrating well. And that's what we are going to focus on. The second thing is synergies. Why do I say the lines are blurring? If you look at the affluent and super affluent, people who are taking, for example, they were using a different regime earlier for, say, hair growth.
They are absolutely open to now adding ingestibles to their regime for faster hair growth. So for us, it's a continuum. So the discovery of beauty ingestibles is happening in the same ecosystems or the pipes as the discovery for beauty. And that's where the synergies are coming. I hope that answers your question. Yeah. And just a follow-up. So again, I maybe may not be the right person to comment on that, but I can't imagine a Lakmé or a Pond's, let's say, in an oral format as again, because that's how the journey of this is.
When you are trying to do both with Oziva, does that not have some bit of an issue given that the formats are very different and you associate, let's say, when you acquired Oziva and I had no idea about the brand back then, I think it was more around different healthcare or wellness product, and today it has become, as you said, the lines are blurring. I don't know whether both the formats can do justice under the same brand. Your thoughts on that, please, so like I said, I'm a firm believer in the portfolio. We are not saying that on Pond's and Lakmé, we are going to have ingestibles. We are saying for well-being, we have a separate portfolio, which is well-being-first brands. Oziva is a wellness, well-being-first ingestibles brand. It had weight management powders. It had collagen, which is good for skin.
Now the portfolio is pivoting to the capsules and collagen and the hydration, which is all ingestibles which are needed for beauty. We are not talking about a lot of topical stuff coming into Oziva, barring where we have clinical evidence that combined with ingestibles, some topical application can help. So we are keeping the portfolios separate, and we are ensuring we are focusing on wellness and beauty intersection, which is where the growth for the future is. Got it. And my second question is on, you mentioned about getting global brands into India. We'll see. And it's great to see the action that you have taken. Do you also think there is a case to, let's say, act as a consolidator in India, given that a lot of smaller brands have realized that they can get up to a point, but offline is something that takes time?
We have a couple of unlisted companies which have also been going through a bit of trouble. The brands are great, but I think the profitability matrices are not that good. So while you're trying to get the organic bit with the global brands, do you think there is a case to consolidate in India as well? So absolutely. And as HUL, we're always on the lookout for good acquisition, but at the right price. This space is ripe with a lot of options. And when we have something to share, we will definitely come to you. Thank you. So Harman, we have a question saying, how should we think about the contribution from Rin 1, 5, and 10 pack? Well, you all know we don't give SKU-wise breakup of revenue. But Harman, any thought that you would want them to kind of take back for our XS packs?
So, the question being: Contribution of business from our price point packs of 1, 5, and 10. So like Shilpa said, I will not be able to comment in specific on the contribution of price point packs, but price point packs play a massive role in driving penetration for our categories. To take the hair example, the reason we have 95% penetration in hair, nine out of 10 households in the country use Clinic Plus shampoo or are able to afford Clinic Plus shampoo or are able to use a shampoo in the first place versus using a bar is because of these access packs. So there is a definite role for them, given we are a country which is on the move, but we have a large chunk of strivers in the country, which is why there is a role for these packs.
And on top of it, there's a role for the rest of the portfolio that we've spoken about, because our job is to make sure that we create universal penetration on a lot of our segments in beauty going forward. Thank you so much, Harman. I just would like to add something. I want to add Abneesh to the question which you asked earlier. The chart that Rohit presented, our B&W market shares are not under-indexed to HUL market shares. The chart called out that when you took premium, and premium in the chart was 120-plus price index. In that segment of beauty and well-being is where we are under-indexed.
And hence the job that Harman mentioned about the big bets, getting masstige portfolio, and the shift of 900 basis points we'll do to the portfolio will end up not only closing, but also ensuring that this segment of the business as well is over-indexed and hence more than fair share as HUL. But overall, as beauty and well-being total category, we're not under-indexed on that to HUL. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first Personal Care Capital Markets Day presentation. As a leader of this newly minted Personal Care division, I'm really excited to bring you closer to the fantastic world of personal care. And I'd like to start that by showing you first an AV on personal care. Our consumers are aspiring to more indulgence, more experiences, more self-care, aspiring to be more every day.
At Personal Care, we are best prepared to make the everyday of our consumers extraordinary with most aspirational brands, with personal experiences designed to thrill the senses and soothe the soul, backed by technologies that build on the cutting edge of the world and a unique understanding of the Indian consumer. We are meeting the aspirations of tomorrow far ahead of anyone else, fueling desires, shaping aspirations, enabling ambition. We are Personal Care. So that's what Personal Care is, a powerhouse franchise, the number one personal care business in the country. We are nearly INR 10,000 crores in size, and we are also the number one business when it comes to skin cleansing. We are home to a franchise which is over a billion consumers. And that are some of the things that makes this company in itself a force to reckon with.
To describe this category or division of personal care, I want to use two different sets of vectors. The first is, of course, the categories that entail this personal care division. So we have skin cleansing, which many of you know as our soaps business, or personal wash as how others call it, which is, of course, the big part of this business. But then we have oral care, a profitable and very important part of our business, and a much smaller but important deodorant business as well. So those are the three categories that really make up personal care. But the second vector in which I often like to describe personal care is the vector of the unparalleled scale of our unmissable brands.
We are home to a powerful set of brands that are very common household names at the same time, but also premium offerings for many, many consumers. So we have Lux and Lifebuoy, which are in many ways synonymous with Hindustan Unilever Limited, and then we have Dove, we have Pears, we have Close-Up, Rexona, Pepsodent. These are brands that so many of you have basically grown up using, and that's why these are brands that are loved by the billions of consumers that we are home to. Four of these brands are over INR 1,000 crores in size, which means that we also have really big scale with these brands, and that's really why we feel that we have an unparalleled scale with our unmissable brands.
This, the combination of our categories and the brands that we have, makes us really ready to take on the personal care opportunity that this country provides. Talking about opportunity, you all saw this chart from Rohit, which was speaking about how there is, of course, a change in the income pyramid of this country. It is very quickly changing from a pyramid to a diamond as consumers are becoming more and more affluent. What we did is try to model what happens when this change starts reflecting in the personal care business. We looked at the per capita consumption of personal care from the striver to the affluent plus. What we realized is that consumers start increasing their consumption by more than two times as they move up this pyramid.
Now, you may argue that in categories that are largely universally penetrated, where will you get two times consumption? And the answer often comes by looking at other countries which are similar, but maybe just a couple of steps ahead. And again, like Rohit showed you, if you compare with Southeast Asia, many of these categories have significantly higher consumption. And that consumption comes from the fact that there are the same categories with more premium benefits and different formats that have really not taken shape yet in India. And therefore, it is our job to lead the disruption of personal care in India and make sure we are bringing these categories forward. We are well placed to benefit from it because, as Rohit showed again, we are over-indexed in the premium market. And therefore, we must lead this disruption for personal care in India.
In order to do that, we have three important pillars to drive this change. The first pillar is breakthrough technology. This business has been built on the foundation of technology that has really made it the powerful platform that it is today. That, coupled with unmissable superior brands that are a foundation for this technology to really go to consumers. And then our market-making might, which can really transform the shape of our portfolio and bring this technology to bear to consumers in a way that's unbeatable. I'll talk you through each of these three pillars. First, let me talk about technology. Now, we have a pioneering legacy when it comes to technology. We were the first Cast Melt bar. Cast Melt is really the technology that goes behind Pears bars. It gives us a glycerin bar, which is transparent in its form.
And this is a favorite among so many homes in the country. This was a multi-year innovation that we launched several decades back and is continuing to go from strength to strength. We were the first DEFI bar. DEFI is the internal technical name for the technology of Dove soap. And more recently, we have become the first DEFI bar that has active nutrient serum in its formulation. And that is what makes Dove bar the strength that it is. And many of you, I'm sure, use it in your homes. We are the first gel toothpaste in a category of white toothpaste. We brought in literally like a breath of fresh air Close-Up with a red gel toothpaste, which is driving freshness. And therefore, we are the market leaders when it comes to the freshness segment in oral care.
So as you can see, technology and breakthrough technology has been the foundation of this business, and we have been leveraging that for decades now. This year, we took that step forward with the Stratos technology. We brought it to the bar of soap. And after five years of research and 20-plus patents, we brought in technology that transforms the bar of soap. It's very simple. It reduces the insoluble TFM in the soap and replaces it with superior skin benefit and sensory-driving actives. With that, we are able to create a soap that gives brighter visuals, creamier lather, and, of course, a lower rate of wear. And all of this put together means that it has absolute demonstrable superiority to its predecessors. It also gives us supply chain resilience. It gives us formulation flex. So all in all, it is a breakthrough in the world of mild bars.
This is not the only technology that we brought to market this year. I'm going to talk to you about three other technologies that are really changing the shape of our business. The first is, interestingly, around engineering the mood. In Lux Body Wash, we brought in a fragrance that is proven to provide confidence to the person who smells it in the blink of an eyelid. I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about that in just a bit after I talk about the other two. The Advanced Shower collections that we have are really about bringing expert skin care benefits into the shower with our Dove Shower collections. These have active-level ingredients in our shower gels, which means that we are able to provide benefits which are like acne removal, glow, and exfoliation at a very, very advanced level.
And we have recently launched this, in fact, in Beauty.com customers with the Dove Serum Shar collection range. And it is performing exceedingly well in just 45 days at a 300 API, which means we are really premiumizing the market, but also transforming it with technology benefits. And then even in the world of oral care with freshness, we have really potent technology with the Zinc Plus technology, which gives us 18 hours of fresh breath after a consumer uses Close Up for brushing his or her teeth. That means that the impact of freshness is much larger and therefore helps us grow the freshness market tremendously. So these are three technologies that have been really powerful and have all already landed into market. And these are, of course, a precursor to many more that are yet to come.
I’m going to show you on the first one, which is around mood engineering, an AV that brings this to life in a much better way. Can I have the AV, please? What they found was striking. The researchers found that the participants' brains responded differently in the presence of Lux fragrance and in a more positive way than normal. In the blink of an eye, and imagine a sampling experience where consumers, much like many of you, experienced the Lux booth earlier. When consumers smell that fragrance, in the blink of an eye, they feel the confidence and what that does to their need to buy a Lux body wash. That’s what we leverage with the power of our technology. This is a powerful example of that.
Now, technology platforms are, of course, really important, but they need a foundation of unmissably superior brands to take them to market. And that's what we have with our portfolio. Here's an example of Lux, which transcends from the bar of soap to a premium sandal offering to body wash, which I just spoke to you about, to a Barton Body premium collection that we call the Essence of Himalayas with Lux, which is on e-commerce only. Now, you need a brand like Lux that can really transcend this pyramid of extremely interesting benefits from the mass offering all the way up to the absolute premium or super premium offering. And when we are able to do that, we can make the brand unmissably superior for every consumer that matters. This also allows us to really take the superiority and design it for channel.
We have these benefits that are tailor-made to the needs of traditional trade with the bar of soap to modern trade with body wash leading the fray there to super premium formats in e-commerce. And many of these have been tailor-made exclusively for these channels so that we can make these brands really impactful for the shopper of those channels. Now, of course, the Unmissable Brand Superiority is a powerful legacy that we have had. But what we are able to do now is multiply this with the power of WIMI. And we do that in two ways. One is with the power of the product understanding and the consumer understanding and the interlock between the two.
So because we have brands of the scale of Close Up, Lux, and Lifebuoy, we are able to go very deep into customizing our formulations to the consumer needs of different parts of the country. For that, we need to intimately understand what are the skin types, what are the habits and traditions for these consumers with neem or tulsi or sandal, for an example. What are the external aggressors? So what are the conditions from a climate or humidity standpoint or pollution standpoint? And what are the economics? What is their willingness to pay? These, quite not surprisingly, vary from different parts of the country. But because of the scale of these brands and, of course, because of our supply chain capability, we are able to customize our formulations for these brands and land benefits that are superior for consumers for that region.
That is the power of WIMI that we are able to do because of the scale of these brands. Now, one part, of course, is the scale of the brands from a point of view of product. But the second is from a point of view of consumer understanding for communication. And we have multiple examples of how we have leveraged very locally relevant insights for communication so that what the consumer sees connects with her in a much more powerful way. While we have examples around celebrities and cultures, the three examples that I want to talk to you about actually come from, firstly, the world of Durga Puja and Lifebuoy. So can I have the AV of that, please?
বেটে হবে গন্ডগোল নারে বেটে ব্যথা তখনই শুরু হয়ে যায় হাত হয় মুখে জীবাণু যখন যায় তাহলে লাইফ বয় ইউজ করো ইউজ করো ইউজ করো জীবাণু চলে গেল চলে গেল চলে গেল লাইফ বয় দিয়ে জীবাণু মিটাও পুজোতে নিশ্চিন্ত হয়ে খাও. So this is not a film that was made for India and translated to Bengali. This was a film that was made for Durga Puja in Bengal. And the size and scale of our brands allows us to do this without losing any economies of scale, but get much more bang for the buck for the communication because it is so relevant to the consumer who's watching it. So while that's Lifebuoy, the second example I'll show you is from a recently launched Lux sandal. Now, as you know, sandal in the natural ingredients world is very, very popular in South India.
And we provided a premium offering with Luxe. And this time, not only was this tailor-made for South India, but we also got a celebrity which was very, very popular in the South. Of course, you may argue that Samantha has got relevance across the country, but here's the AV that shows how we brought her to endorse Luxe. ಹೊಸ Luxe ಸ್ಯಾಂಡಲ್ 100% ಶುದ್ಧ ಚಂದನದ ಎಣ್ಣೆ ಮತ್ತು ವಿಟಮಿನ್ ಸಿ ಜೊತೆ ಸೂರ್ಯ ಮತ್ತು ಪೊಲ್ಯೂಷನ್ ನಿಂದ ಆಗುವ ಕಲೆಗಳನ್ನು ನಿವಾರಿಸುತ್ತೆ. ಡಲ್ನೆಸ್ ಕಡಿಮೆ ಮಾಡಿ ಕೊಡುತ್ತೆ ಸ್ಪಷ್ಟವಾದ ಕಾಂತಿಯುತ ತೊಚೆ. ಈಗ ನಾನು ಸೂರ್ಯನ ಎದುರಿಸಬಹುದು ನನ್ನ ಫಿಲ್ಮ್ಸ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಲನ್ಸ್ ಎದುರಿಸಿದಂಗೆ ಭಯವಿಲ್ಲದೆ ನನ್ನ ಕಾಂತಿ ನಿರಂತರ ನನ್ನ ಸ್ಪಷ್ಟವಾದ ಕಾಂತಿ. ಹೊಸ Luxe ಸ್ಯಾಂಡಲ್ Luxe sandals got launched just about two months back, and we have had very promising results in the short time that we are seeing it in market.
The third example, and the one actually I'm most proud of, I must say, comes from a brand that many of you may not know. It is Moti. It is a brand that sells actually predominantly in the western region of the country, and it has, over a period of time, built this tradition of being the soap that is used by many consumers for, if I may call, a holy bath on the day of Diwali. Now, this tradition, built over many years, was leveraged in a very interesting social-first campaign, in fact, a social-only campaign, because we tied up with two artists who created content that gave a very, very different meaning to what Moti means. Can I have the AV, please?
निं निं निं निं दिवाळी गाई म्हशी होवाळी भुई चकराची भुई सुटली ते फिरत पोहोचले आभाळी निं निं निं निं दिवाळी आई गाते उपाळी दारू दार त्यावर नाचे पोरं येडी गवाळी उठा उठा दिवाळी आली उठा उठा दिवाळी आली मोठी स्नानाची वेळ झाली दिवाळी दिवाळी दिवाळी दिवाळी आली दिवाळी दिवाळी दिवाळी उठा उठा दिवाळी आली मोठी स्नानाची वेळ झाली. Now you might argue, what does a song and dance video like that do to a brand like Moti? Well, the answer is simple. Apart from getting 50 million impressions, most of them organic on this, we had 90,000 people who took this song and created their own content with the same choreographing and posted it themselves, giving this campaign significantly higher boost. And let me say that retailers till today, a month after Diwali, are asking us for more and more Moti stock.
That's the power of social-first thinking, and we are really proud of what we can do. It needs great consumer understanding and brands that can carry it off, and we have both of these. Now, moving on from unmissable superior brands, the third part of our strategy is really market making. Body washes is an example that is really front and center here, and we have, after many years of relatively modest growth, seen a significant acceleration over the last three years at the pace at which body wash has moved, and that means that we are confident when we compare with the trajectory of body wash with other liquid formats in HUL and also how body wash did in other parts of the world. Once it hits this point of inflection, the pace at which it accelerates is tremendous.
So 100x is a very, very strong possibility in the not-so-distant future with body wash. And with our portfolio, we think we are well placed to make sure that we benefit from that opportunity. Roll-ons is, of course, at an earlier stage of development, but with time, we know that this will also see the same trajectory. And we leverage the power of our global technical know-how and our consumer understanding to make this format really big in the future. In order to make this really happen, we need to leverage the capabilities of market making that HUL has developed over decades of market development. So it has really three parts. The first is having communication that clearly indicates the current habit and persuades the consumer to try the new benefit format.
The second is sampling, and not just sampling which is general, but sampling that educates, sampling that really is done at massive scale at the right touch points, so be it residential complexes, colleges, or even the point of sale, but just the demo that you saw at the booth today, how do we do that at a scale which goes into millions? And, of course, couple that with distribution, which is really the biggest moat of this company. When the three of these come together, we are able to create unparalleled acceleration of our market development categories, and to bring the first pillar to life, which is really media, I want to show you the latest ad that we have on Lux Body Wash, so can I have the AV, please?
I have news. मैंने break up कर लिया अपने साबुन से क्योंकि इस्तेमाल के साथ इनकी खुशबू कम हो सकती है। I choose Lux Body Wash, खास ऑर्किड की खुशबू के साथ। इसकी खुशबू महके बारह घंटों तक साबुन से ज्यादा। Lux Body Wash, खुशबू जो महके बारह घंटों तक। Apart from the blink of an eyelid confidence, here's fragrance that lasts twelve hours, but also fragrance that lasts till the last drop of body wash in your bottle. Unlike the soap where the fragrance withers away with time, this lasts for much longer. That's the power of what we are able to do with our market making portfolio.
And therefore, I'd say in summary. Oh, before I go there, we have to stay three steps ahead in Body Wash too, because we will create the market, but unless we make sure that we have benefit segments that are identified and we are playing within that, we cannot stand still. So we have fragrance, we have clean beauty, we have moisturization, we have sensitive benefit delivery, indulgent sensorials that I spoke to you about from Lux and advanced skincare benefits. All of these are in market today, but we have a portfolio of benefits that are here to follow in every quarter for the next few quarters to come. So a combination of all these things is important to ensure that we stay the course with winning with market making.
So in summary, we have our technology pillar, which is really the foundation of why we are very strong as personal care, unmissable brand superiority, which makes our brands take this technology to consumers and our market development might or our market making might, which makes sure that consumers can change the formats that they are moving to, and therefore we can transform our portfolio and set personal care up for the future. That's what I had to share on personal care. I'd now like to pause for questions. So a couple of questions to you. See, in the personal care, the categories you showed, these are probably the only categories where if I take over a decade, HUL has probably not gained share. There have been some share losses. What do you, now that you've taken a fresh look at the business, is it?
Product superiority or is it to do with product superiority or value equation, anything that you can think of which will change as you move into the future? Thank you for that question. I think it's really important. The fact is that the way to transform the personal care business for the future is to make sure that we are changing it from where it is today to where it needs to be tomorrow. For that, we need to have the technology platforms that transform this business. We need to leverage our brands, and we need to transform the shape of our categories. So the reason we will be in a much better place ten years from now, and in fact, much sooner than ten years from now, is because we will lead the disruption of personal care category with the new future formats.
We will drive the premiumization benefits using the technology platforms that we have brought, and in many ways, it's fair to say that some of these have not had the pace in the past, but the fact is that we are well set to do it in the future, and that is why the future will be much, much better, and just one last follow-up on this. Is there a trade-off between profitability and market share here, given that there are other players in the market who are strong but probably offer lower prices than you? Or do you think there is no trade-off required as you try to gain market share in some of these categories? Thank you. I should have probably planted that question. The fact is that as our portfolio transforms, the only trade-off we have is that we move to formats that are far more profitable.
Actually, this transformation journey is actually going to be one of driving both growth and better profitability through mix. So it's the combination of these two things that makes sure that we are well set. Hi, this is Shirish Pardeshi. Soap traditionally is a very highly penetrated category, and I do understand the ROYC framework, what you're using, unmissable opportunity. I think there is a task. After a long time, we are seeing that there is a clear thought. Just one novice question. If the penetration is 90% plus, I think the task on hand is how we would increase the frequency of usage, and probably we'll use the formats. And I think I can see that there is a work on liquid which is happening.
Do you think you're so confident that the technology angle which you're showing us will get you there, or something else has to be done? I'm absolutely confident that the technology platforms that we have will dramatically shape the benefit delivery of our products. And I'm talking about liquids here. I'm talking about our freshness benefits on oral care. I'm talking about our bar soaps. The premium benefits that we offer, the format delivery that we bring with market making, all of these mean that consumers will consume more as they get more and more affluent. So I'm absolutely confident that it is these product technology platforms. We are, of course, showing you what is in market today. We have a series of platforms that are well set for the future that will keep moving this journey further and faster. Okay. My second question and last question.
Between bars and liquids, what kind of premium? I mean, we have been tracking this stock for many years. What kind of premium do you think is justifiable if the price of soap is X? Actually, there is no single answer to that question if you ask me. So the Dove Serum Shower collection that I showed you is at a 300 index to liquids itself, and it is having unprecedented success within 45 days of launch in the Beauty.com customers where we have launched it. So that answer really boils down to how we leverage our brands and the benefits that we provide to get the maximum return on these investments. But there are parts of our portfolio where being at the optimal price value equation will trigger this market development at a much faster rate.
And that is why the presence of a portfolio from Lux to Pears to Dove means that we can try all of these and make sure that we are pacing up the pace of liquids adoption much, much faster. Thank you. Maybe we take one more question. Yeah. Yeah, hi. This is Nihal from Ambit. Just one question on your Stratos technology. I would believe it gives you the opportunity to lower the costing of your bar of soap for the brands you use it. Would it be fair to believe that given your focus on top-line growth that you've highlighted at the start of the presentation, this will be used to maybe lower the prices and gain market share rather than become a margin driver?
So I want you to refer back to what Ritesh has been saying through multiple quarters, which is that Stratos technology is a technology that drives superiority of our products versus competition. It is not a cost-saving initiative. So we are not trying to use it to change the price value equation. We are trying to use it. In fact, we are using it to win with superior products in market. It is, in fact, an investment that we are making through the technology in the products. So it is not about changing the price value equation. Thank you. Yeah, hi. This is Harit from Investec. I just had a follow-up on Stratos. Yes. So how are you communicating this unmistakable benefit to the consumer in the market, given it's across price points? And what quantifiable impact have you seen in the first few months of your go-to-market?
So we leverage our brands and the communication of these brands, including point-of-sale material and all these things, to drive these benefits. But the reality is that for brands that have upwards of 60%-70% penetration, consumers realize these benefits as they use these. Because it is not about telling people, "Here, there's a Lifebuoy brand. Please use it. You'll find a benefit." Two-thirds of this country, more than two-thirds of this country, is anyway using these brands. So the best proof of this is really in use, which leads really to the answer to the second question, which is that with the big ships that these are, they take time for us to bring about the change. So how are we proving it to ourselves? We start with consumer testing, technical testing, and then in-market evidence. The in-market evidence is really promising.
But given the size and scale of these brands, it will take time for us to turn the ship in the right direction, and that is what we are seeing happen with the data that we are seeing. Thank you so much, Vipul. And thank you so much to the audience for being so engaging throughout the first part of the day. Hello everyone and welcome back. Like Shilpa mentioned, your lunch was just the beginning of the food part of today. We continue in that vein with our business. In the next few minutes, I'll talk you through a quick look at our business, what the India food opportunity is, our strategy to address the opportunity, and what success looks like. First, our business. We are quite a formidable foods and refreshment business already, a large business, a profitable business. We used to be about a sixth of HUL.
Now we are about a fourth of HUL, so a more substantial part of HUL and more profitable than many of the foods businesses in India. We have leading category positions. We are the leaders in tea, leaders in lifestyle nutrition, leaders in condiments, number two in coffee, but we lead south, which is half the market in India. Our competitiveness has been strengthening significantly over the last decade. If you look at tea, we were 10% smaller than our next competitor 10 years back. Today, we are 30% larger. We were about the same size as our nearest competitor in ketchup. Today, we are twice their size. We were always market leaders in HFD, but from 3.5, we've taken it to 4.5. So significantly stronger competitively in the last decade. Our competitive moats include brands, technology, and of course, enterprise capabilities of HUL.
If you look at our brands, they are unmissably superior. The UBS scores, as we now call it, are multiples of the nearest competitor across categories. And I'll just play you a few of our ads to give you a sense, to give you a bit of a feel on what are the brands that we have. Can we have the AV, please? कितना बजा है? 5 बज रहे हैं। अकेले हो? जी। चाय लेंगे? नहीं। मैं ले लूंगा। क्या तुम इन्हें जानते हो?
नहीं। बेटा, ऐसे किसी पर भरोसा नहीं करना चाहिए। आंटी, हम देखकर मन नहीं बनाते। खुशबू से पहचान लेते हैं कि क्या बुरा है और क्या अच्छा। मैं भी ले लूंगी। अच्छी है। बहुत अच्छी बनी है। Brooke Bond Red Label, स्वाद अपनापन का। रे पावगरे। मैंने चाय से कहा, "आज तो चाय पीने का भी वक्त नहीं है।" जाओ। चाय ने कहा, "थोड़ा सा वक्त चुरा के रख लो।" आज फुर्सत का स्वाद भी चख लो। रे पावगरे, वाह ताज। मैक्स! सर! कम। टीम सिलेक्शन में लड़की। You all right? लड़की है, भाई। आराम से। यह गेम लड़के-लड़कियों का नहीं, स्टैमिना का होता है। बोल के नहीं, बैट से जवाब देना। Show me what I got, what I got. I'mma push the tempo every nigga from the bus. Make you reach your words 'cause I'm never gonna stop. Tell the NATES, see us, I'ma never ever stop.
Never gonna stop. You are in the team. Boost has nutrients and gives us three times more stamina. Boost is the secret of our energy. एक दिन किसान को गिरगिट ने ललचाया। ओए, क्यों इतना इंतज़ार? रंग बदल, टमाटर लगेंगे एकदम तैयार। किसान बोला, "हम्म, पहले दिखाओ कोई जो गिरगिट की कसम खाता।" देखा? मेरे नाम पे सब भरोसा करें, क्योंकि मुझे रंग बदलना नहीं आता। इसी सच्चाई और कुदरती लाल टमाटरों से बनता है किसान टोमेटो केचप। ना कोई बनावटी रंग या फ्लेवर। रोज थोड़ी सच्चाई, रोज थोड़ा किसान। So those were our unmissably superior brands. The other moat is, of course, technology. Rohit spoke about Red Label Natural Care. I'm proud to say that it is India's only tea which is clinically proven to improve your immunity.
And that happens because we have a mix of five herbs: ginger, ashwagandha, etc., which come together and help you fall ill less often. We have ways to get more aroma out of coffee, which is the biggest driver of coffee, whether it is capturing it and adding it back in the factory or indeed using our flavor partners to get more coffee aroma. We have the science that it takes to deliver India's only diabetes product, which has been clinically proven among Indian people, which works not only for diabetics but also for pre-diabetics. These are the kind of technologies that help us stay ahead and serve consumers better. And of course, as a large foods business housed in HUL, we get to have the cake and eat it too because we have dedicated R&D, dedicated supply chain for tea, and custom go-to-market where required.
Like our team takes products to chefs in restaurants under Unilever Food Solutions. Our teams go separately to tea shops to give people our tea brands, and of course, our medical marketing team meets doctors to detail all the things about our expert range in Horlicks. The might of HUL takes us to 1.8 million outlets directly, more than any other foods company. It helps us knock on 30 million doors as part of HUL's market development program, and the fact that we have 16 WIMI clusters helps us develop products catered to individual consumer tastes. Rohit talked about the fact that our beverages business is the biggest beneficiary of this WIMI approach because that's where we really need different products for different parts of India, so the India foods opportunity is actually poised to inflect.
Packaged foods and beverages are known to inflect at a per capita disposable income of about INR 10,000. 70 million Indians are already there, and 80 million more will be there by 2030. If you look at our specific categories, coffee is known to inflect at INR 5,000, and condiments are known to inflect at INR 6,000, which means that many more than 70 million Indians are already there, and many more than 80 million Indians will get there by 2030. That's what makes this opportunity exciting. But alongside this affluence, we believe that these are the mega trends that are going to shape the food category in India. The first one is unpackaged to packaged, commodities moving from unpackaged to packaged. The second one is convenience that people are seeking. The third one is healthier alternatives to what is being currently consumed.
We then have cuisine experimentation because Indians today are very experimental when it comes to trying different cuisines. There is premiumization within a vertical of, say, condiments. And last but not least, we are increasingly aware of specialized nutrition needs for specific people at specific life stages. So that's also a big trend that is shaping the Indian food landscape. So how do we serve this evolving, rising affluence of India juxtaposed with these trends that we talked about in food? Essentially, we serve this opportunity with an India for India strategy. While tea may not have been a very attractive category in many parts of the world, it continues to be an extremely attractive category in India, which is why we continue to play in tea. Acquiring Horlicks, again, a largely India-centric, India for India kind of a move.
And while we have our global brands like Hellmann's and Knorr, we make products to cater to local tastes under these global brands. And looking at and taking this India for India approach means that these are the six where-to-play choices that we've made. Tea, which is enjoying a formalization tailwind from unpackaged to packaged, leaves us in the state of benefiting most from it because we are market leaders. Coffee is tomorrow's tea, and it is going to be a much bigger category in the years to come. And playing there is a good idea. We already have a start. Lifestyle nutrition, the mega trend in the market, is premiumization by specialization. We believe we are best placed to address that. We are in the sweet spot as far as condiments are concerned because it's an underpenetrated growing category where we are market leaders.
Cooking aids and mini meals come from the convenience-seeking trend that we saw earlier, and we believe that we can cater to it with our portfolio of food brands. Last but not least, we are among the best food services business in the world. We call it UFS, Unilever Food Solutions. We believe that we've reached a sort of stage there where we can inflect it and make it much bigger than it is today. So how does this play out? In beverages, I think the way to win is the first vector is upgradation. There is a lot of headroom to grow. One-fourth of volumes of tea today is still unpackaged. As it becomes unpackaged to packaged, there is a lot of growth to be had. Half the volumes of coffee today are conventional, which is roast and ground that people filter.
The benefit of instant coffee is going to appeal to these consumers. Customization, very relevant for this part of the business. One Indian's tea is not another Indian's cup of tea, as we say internally. People like different things about their tea in different parts of India. Some people seek flavor. Some people need to color their milk. Some need a caffeine rush, and some just want a thick-mouth feel. This applies to both tea and coffee. We use this understanding and our technology to design products suitable for different palettes in India so that we can win everywhere. Of course, there's premiumization, and we are very excited about bringing our beautiful brand, Pukka, in these gorgeous-looking packs that you see, which are a bunch of a range of herbal infusions that give functional benefits like sleep quality, focus, energy, immunity, etc., etc.
Formats in coffee are evolving too. We already have a freeze-dried coffee under our brand, Bru, which is doing well. Our e-comm pilot on Bru Cold Coffee has done well enough for us to feel confident to scale it up. I saw a few empty or missing cans on your tables. Tell me what you think about the product. As far as lifestyle nutrition is concerned, we need to take a de-averaged look at this category or business. If you de-average it by geography, there are actually two Indias: the South and the East of India, which is 70% of the market, where the category is very highly penetrated, and we are market leaders. The job there is no longer to get more users or increase penetration. The job there is to increase consumption.
But in the rest of India, where the category is underpenetrated, it is only about a third of the market, and we are not market leaders. The opportunity for us and the role that we see for ourselves is that of gaining share and not of developing the market. If you look at this, if you cut this by benefits, there is generic HFD, and there is a specialized part of this which is growing faster, and we are having a play which is also performing better than the overall business. We see this as a mega trend because people who used to go to general physicians now go to specialists because people want a person who knows, say, bone health to advise them about bone health, or someone who knows diabetes to advise them about diabetes, and not just one person telling them everything.
This is what is playing out in the category as well. If you were to look at each of these vectors, how do you increase consumption? I think one thing that we have done ever since we acquired this business is significantly strengthened our competitive position within the category. Whichever dimension you look at it, value share, volume share, penetration, brand power, it has never been better. Horlicks brand hasn't been stronger. Our penetration hasn't been higher. Our shares haven't been bigger. So the job of getting stronger within the category is very much happening. However, we need to drive consumption off the category.
One of the things that we are doing is, of course, providing the more intuitive price pack architecture to get people to buy larger packs and consume more, and also try and make a Horlicks that tastes good already even tastier because fundamentally this category is driven by kids asking for it, and kids will ask for tasty products. The biggest trigger for this category is tastes good. The biggest barrier for it is that it doesn't. So we feel that if we can make an already tasty Horlicks even tastier, we can increase consumption. Boost is a jewel of a brand that we have in this table. And while it is a South-centric brand today, it enjoys equity in the minds of consumers even outside of the South. It has brand power. It has latent residual equity but doesn't have a market presence.
We see that as an opportunity for Boost. We also see a format opportunity for Boost because there is a large milk-based RTD market which is growing. We’ve done a pilot on Boost RTD this year, which again inspires enough confidence to scale it beyond the few cities that we’ve put it in. The specialist nutrition opportunity is really big. Today, we play in nutrition for seniors. We’ve just scaled it up as we speak with Strength Plus, nutrition for diabetics, which is Diabetes Plus, nutrition for women who need bone strength with Women’s Plus. If you see the entire landscape, the market, there are more spaces that we can foray into with Horlicks Plus range.
The way we cater to this opportunity, we already have a critical mass going with this business, which is more profitable than the overall business, and we are market leaders even in the specialist adult segment now. So we feel that it's the right vector to go after with superior products and claims. Like I was talking about earlier, we have products which can claim to be something that others aren't. For example, our Horlicks Diabetes Plus is the only one which works for diabetics and for prediabetics. We have inherited customer capabilities like medical marketing, which helps us detail to doctors. And we now do in silico AI-based clinicals, which are faster and cheaper ways of making strong claims to consumers.
So we believe that this Horlicks Plus business can triple by 2030, and it's a big opportunity that we have with the power and endorsement of the Horlicks brand. Ketchup, we are the OG market makers, and we want to continue doing that. In the last eight-odd years, we have tripled penetration and nearly tripled our business, but the opportunity remains high in terms of per capita consumption, which is what makes this a sweet spot: high growth, low penetration, market-leading position. And we are all into that. We've brought the world's number one mayonnaise to India. This is going to be a really big market. It's already a big market. It's going to be even bigger. And ever since we launched it about three years ago, we've managed to multiply the size of the business.
Knorr, I think as a food brand in India, enjoys the unique position of being seen as a premium international food brand. There is no other food brand in India which is uniquely associated with being international and having international credentials. Therefore, we feel that whether it's our cooking sauces or whether it's our mini meals, we can bring it very credibly with Knorr and get the sort of results that we are getting, so cooking aids has been multiplying over the last few years. It's early days for our Korean noodles, but we are quite encouraged with the start that we've got this year. Unilever Food Solutions is a bit of a hidden jewel in our business. We have quadrupled the business over the last six years, and we believe that we can quadruple it again over the next six years, and the mantra is simple.
Just go to more restaurants, get our best sellers from the global portfolio, and do what we call digital selling, which is nothing but advertising to communities of chefs on, say, social media, generating leads, and then following those leads with demos and eventually conversion. So that's really what we plan to do across verticals. What success looks like is an even better foods company than we are today, even more competitive, even more profitable, and faster growing at about high single digit. That's what I had to share. Thank you for your attention. Would love to take questions. First question is on the tea. What was the unpackaged tea, say, pre-COVID? Currently, it is 25%. Why I'm asking this is both you and the second national player. Both are struggling in terms of volume growth.
So if you could comment on detergent, which is also very highly penetrated, last 10 years, how would be the volume growth in detergent for you versus tea? So what is the difference here from a consumption perspective, if you can tell us? Second quick question will be on coffee. What will be the relative market share here? So in 10 years versus, say, Nestlé, how would be the share loss? Because you are now number two. And if you could give that data. Okay. I think the first question is that the contribution of unpackaged tea to tea was higher than 25% before COVID. I don't remember the numbers offhand, but it would have been closer to a third. So it's a secular trend of increasing contribution of packaged tea. On coffee, actually, we've never really been number one nationally. We've always been number one in the South.
So our share competitiveness, our goal for coffee, is to widen our market leadership in the South and narrow our number two position gap in the non-South and just get closer to the leader than we are today nationally. You put out an expectation of high single-digit growth for foods business. I wanted to understand the logic behind this. If you look at categories like tea, Horlicks, and the fast-growing Knorr and Kissan, if you could give some flavor on that, how are you thinking about that? And the second piece is clearly there's a lot of focus on specialized nutrition. But things that you mentioned about increasing consumption for HFD, I think most of these steps have been undertaken by Unilever over the recent years as well. So what are you trying to do more differently or any aspect which you think is working more than the other?
And also, we saw the Boost RTD. So any other food formats that you would want to extend Horlicks to? Thank you. Okay, so let me take them one by one. I think the first question was about the growth algorithm for our business. I think the algorithm is very similar to the HUL one that Rohit spoke about, which is Core, Future Core, and Market Makers. Core grows broadly in line with the market. Future Core grows about 1.2x of the market, and Market Makers grows twice as fast as the market. So, that's how the high single-digit number gets worked out. The second question was in the area of nutrition overall or HFD overall. I think we are betting big on specialization of nutrition. So, just like the Core, Future Core, Market Makers shape of HUL will move towards Market Makers.
shape of the foods business will move towards market makers. The shape of the HFD business will also move towards the specialized business, so it grows faster, becomes bigger, more profitable, so that's definitely a vector. The here and now, which is the standard Horlicks, is part of what we call Core, so it'll broadly grow in line with the market. We are the market, and the two things that we are trying to do to increase consumption, one is get incentivized consumption in terms of pack price architecture, and two is incentivize consumption or trigger consumption by making Horlicks tastier. The question on Boost format is, I think chocolate-based drinks extend to formats more easily and more obviously because a kid is going to ask for a Boost RTD.
Horlicks, while it is a powerful master brand, and you could imagine several formats under Horlicks, I think we're just going to focus on getting the Core right now and getting our specialist range to really fire before we potentially look at other formats. Yeah. Hi. This is Shirish. Yeah, Shirish. At the back. Please go ahead. Yeah. Let me ask this question, and pardon me the statement which I'm making. When do you think really you will see the excitement in HFD portfolio? A year before we were here, we heard 30 million samples. We heard penetration-led growth. If I reference a year before, what is the penetration-led growth or what is the penetration you have right now? And we have invested a lot of money. So what is the outcome? Yeah.
So like I said, whichever metric you look at within the category, including penetration, has strengthened significantly. If I remember the numbers correctly, we are 600-700 basis points higher penetration today than we used to be when we acquired it. So the job of getting more users into the category, I believe, has been achieved. But growth, more growth will come by driving consumption because the D-average look of the business showed that in the South and East, which is where the bulk of the market is, there isn't too much more gain that we can get from penetration. So we've just got to get pricing that incentivize consumption and product that incentivize consumption. So that's the leg that we now need to get into. We want to sequentially increase, improve the performance of the business as we go along. And we don't expect a dramatic shift.
We expect a gradual improvement. Okay. So you mean to say that you have used the word inflection point many times in your presentation. Do you think this inflection point is near-term or it is long-term? So the inflection, as far as HFD is, are you asking about HFD or overall? Only HFD. So on HFD, I think that the real inflection is the shift from a generalist kind of good for everyone to specialist. And the faster we are able to make that shift is when really an inflection will happen. The rest of the business is the core business, which should grow in line with the market, and Boost presents us with widespaced opportunity, both in geography and in format. Okay. Just last question. We have seen the category since the time you have acquired this brand four or five years before.
I think what comes again, the milk inflation is eating into the lower consumption that we heard. At the end, it is a discretionary category, and when the food inflation is higher, the consumer choices would be different. Now, in that context, your price pyramid structure, what you presented, is it really a pricing issue for this category to see that inflection point, or you think penetration is largely going to solve the problem which we are dealing with? Like I mentioned, like you correctly said, this is a discretionary category, and therefore we have to make it more sticky. Our pricing currently, what we are doing is being done to incentivize consumption because large-pack users consume more. And that's really what we are trying to do with the price curve. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Tom Kite from Sarasin.
Protein is a macronutrient, which has gained quite a lot of popularity in recent years. Are you considering bringing protein-based products into your portfolio? So we have actually one offering that we've got in our Horlicks table is, or in the Horlicks Plus table is protein. But we find that because we've been relatively late into the protein space, and the protein space is very, very crowded from a mass protein X to very specialized products for gym goers, we believe that our right to win is lower in protein supplements. It's higher in women, diabetes, seniors, and some of the other spaces that we talked about. So we believe that we are better off going after those opportunities which offer us right to win profitably. Thank you. Hi. Avi Mehta from Macquarie.
I just want, when you gave us the opportunity size, clearly there is huge headroom that we can see in condiments, in mini meals, and even in the nutrition segment. I'm just trying to contrast it with the expectation on growth that we have. What is holding us back from assuming? What are the impediments that do not make us confident for, say, a low double-digit growth over here, given the huge headroom that I see? So we'd love to hear your thoughts on what drove that thought and what kind of makes you cautious over here. Yeah. I think you're right that the opportunity is big. We are also convinced that the choices that we've made offer a lot of headroom for us to grow profitably. Like I said, the structure of the algorithm is the Core Future Core Market Makers.
And it all depends on how quickly these markets and our growth indexed to them happen. It's math. Can we grow faster? Definitely. It's not for want of space to grow. It's not for want of right to win. But we just want to see how this moves in terms of the overall shape and construct. So would it be fair? Sorry. So just to understand this better, it is the current portfolio mix that is weighing on our expectations. Is that the right way to look at this? Yeah. I think that would be, yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. And the way the growth algo plays out is going to change that, the portfolio mix, right? Because if Market Makers grows 2x and Future Core grows 1.2x, Core grows x, the shape will change.
And put it differently, when we meet again, say, two years, three years down the line, this might actually change is how you would conduct it. Yes. Yes. It would move in favor of Future Core and Market Makers. Thank you. Tejas from Avendus. So last three, four years, it used to be a very regular feature that when we used to come to food and refreshment section, only then the under penetration and distribution used to be discussed because for other categories, the problem statement is very different than FNR has. So today, you dialed up on many other levers that you will be using. But distribution has not been discussed that, except TI, I understand it's fully penetrated. But on Horlicks, what percentage of overall our company distribution we would have actually touched upon? Now, how do you see the opportunity using that particular lever for growth? Yeah.
I think distribution is an opportunity for all our market makers. So it is less of an opportunity for, say, core Horlicks because over the last few years, we've significantly increased distribution. But there definitely is an opportunity to take our plus range to more Horlicks outlets. Likewise, there's an opportunity to take mayonnaise to more ketchup outlets and ketchup to more tea outlets. So market makers have a distribution opportunity. The core part, they are very well distributed already. Thanks. Yuvam, welcome to all of you. Over the next 25 minutes, what I'll try and do is distill the whole presentation in two parts. What's been a very successful decade for us in home care? What are some of the underlying principles and how do we carry that forward? That's how I have structured this presentation.
So very quickly, if you look at the last decade, certainly has been one where we as home care are really proud of it because there's been a step-up in turnover. The bottom line has expanded very, very healthily. And during this entire period, we've been incredibly competitive. What's really lying behind this is really our ability to play a full portfolio. And when I describe full portfolio, it's across two spectrums. It is a portfolio that straddles right from what Rohit articulated as from the Strivers to the Affluent Plus. And that's how our brands Wheel, Rin, Sunlight, and Surf play. At the same time, we've also been pioneers in formats which have tended to deliver better price per wash and better growth for the category. So across both these vectors, we've tended to lead.
Even in one of the most spoken categories like liquids, between 2013 and 2023, we've been at it, and our contribution has increased threefold. So certainly, it's a decade which has taught us really at the heart of it, doing market making, pioneering formats of the future, and really playing the full portfolio. And that's really served us very, very well. Some examples, we really built a premium powder business in the fabric cleaning world. And Surf Excel, we're proud of the fact that it crosses INR 10,000 crores. Built entirely as a pioneer who's delivered new users into premium powder. What you see on the table on the top is really the penetration movement between the last decade. So there's a 4x penetration, and the turnover has gone up 10x. Underpinning that, and the reason you have this wider gap between penetration going up and turnover is unmissable product superiority.
One of the things that really makes this brand very special and the category special is at the heart of this category is product superiority. And therefore, we've been able to get consumers to experience blown powder and stay with it and convert more of their wash loads using a blown powder. Not just that, we've also been able to pioneer a segment like fabric enhancers with Comfort. Rohit mentioned a slew of brands that have crossed INR 1,000 crores. Comfort is one of them. Again, done by the decade of market development, significant emphasis on trial generation, educating consumers on what really is the use of fabric enhancers. And that's how it's really come to bear now in terms of being a very, very large and profitable franchise for us. And of course, liquids, while it gets a lot of news now, we've been at it silently.
The penetration has gone up significantly, and so has the turnover. So this, at the heart, tells you that when we get market making right, we're able to lead the agenda and as well as build scale profitably. So when we've looked at this over a decade, these are clear learnings that come through. The first is we need a portfolio to play a portfolio that straddles from Strivers to Affluent Plus and a portfolio that has the ability to lead format development of the future. The second bit is pioneering premiumization. It's been at the heart of a laundry strategy. Any one of you would have seen a laundry strategy 20 years back would have been about premiumization. It continues to be the same. So it's unflinching in terms of our ability to premiumize the market. Underpinned by very, very strong unmissable brand superiority.
The one aspect I'd really like to highlight here is the incredible amount of knowledge and wisdom we have with the R&D team to design chassis and design for performance that is best suited to winning in many Indias. The scale allows us to have different formulations in different parts of the country, but we do have expertise both in the area of cleaning as well as building expertise in the area of fragrance, both of which are really key drivers in preference of any brand within this category, and last but not the least, this is one category that has really benefited from excellence in execution.
And I mean excellence in execution right from upstream, which is low-cost manufacturing, low-cost and agile supply chain, all the way to delivering scale as far as we are concerned in terms of the significant reach that HUL has in terms of physical reach and our ability to do that at very low cost. So that's something that really serves this business really, really well. Now, flipping over to the next decade, you might ask, "We are a very large business. Does this business have scope to grow?" And I think Rohit, when he started, referred to this chart. And when we see markets around us, whether it's Indonesia, whether it's Vietnam, there is, as affluence increases, there is huge potential to grow the category. And home care is no different. The obvious question would be, there are many categories in play.
What does this affluence have to do as far as home care is concerned? Now, what it does have, and Rohit has explained this chart, but if you just see the top part and you see the affluent and affluent plus more than double. Now, with that comes their expectations on laundry and their ability to pay for that expectation. So what you really see here is if a Striver pays x on laundry, as you move up the ladder, there's nearly 2x the spend. Why does this happen? This happens because right at the bottom, you've got bars where there's a certain cost per wash. Let's say that cost per wash is x. When the consumers move from bars to powders, the cost per wash for the same brand goes up by 30%. So you've got 1.3x that you realize for the same brand.
When you then move from powders to liquid, this number goes to 1.8x, and when it moves from liquids to capsule versus liquid, it goes to another 1.8x, so the ability and the reason for that is the concentration, manufacturing, and packaging. All three of them come together, and the consumer is willing to pay for that convenience, so therefore, as the affluent doubles, the spending part doubles, people are willing to spend 2x of where they are today as far as the category is concerned. Now, having seen the category spends going up, we are well placed to really tap into it because if you look at our portfolio and you look at our shares, we have significantly higher shares with Surf at the top, which is nearly 3x the share at the bottom.
So as premiumization happens, the natural part of the pie coming to us is going to be significantly larger. So premiumization in itself is a tailwind. And as India gets more prosperous, this tailwind is likely to benefit us a lot more if we get a few things right. And the few things right are really about a sharp choice on where we will invest a significant amount of money and resource in market making. And we're really calling out liquids in that space. When I mean liquids, it's both liquids and capsule. Before we go into the details on liquids, if you look at consumers' laundry expectation and dwell on it for a second, you really have a situation where our wardrobes are expanding in two forms. One, it's no longer just cotton. There is linen. There's polycoat.
There's a variety of materials which bring along with it challenges of delivering tough stain removal. That's on one side. On the other side, it's no longer the boring blacks or whites. There is a lot more color in our wardrobe. And therefore, there is emphasis on, again, stain removal without impacting color. That does require superiority in technology in cleaning by being harsh on stains but being soft on texture of clothes or soft on color of clothes. So it's really underpinning the way we design our products. The second benefit is when you look at washing machine users in the country and you look at the amount of times they use the washing machine for their load, 70% of the time a washing machine is used, but 30% of the load is still handwashed. And that will slowly move to 100% machine wash.
That's the second source of growth. The third, the consumer is willing to pay a premium if you're able to get more convenience going. And that's why a big bet on capsule as well. It really simplifies the laundry cycle into chucking a capsule in and getting fresh, well-cleaned clothes. But one of the things that is underpinning all of this is as you get into more machine, as the wardrobe becomes wider, the emphasis on product that delivers tough stain removal will always remain hygiene. And therefore, the role of technology to up our game on cleaning credentials will always remain at the heart of this category. And that indeed is the strength that we have because of years of experience in both technology and expertise that we have with our R&D team.
Now, when you then look at liquids, and I'm calling out liquids as the most important market-making bet we'll have over the next decade, it's for this reason. If you just take India on the whole and you just take the two numbers there, which are quite telling, there are about 68 million households which own a washing machine today. But of the 68 million households, just 17 million use liquids in washing machine. So there is opportunity to get from the universe of washing machine users every washing machine user to use a liquid. And that is the market-making opportunity a brand like Surf will go after. It is really to expand the pie by developing liquids as a category. Yeah? And we'll do it again using the learnings from the past. It is going to be done by deploying the portfolio.
Rohit has spoken about our tier two entry. It's off to a very good start as far as Rin is concerned, but there is a role of tier one, and we believe the role of tier one, which is Surf, is to make fundamentally the liquid users to get into washing machine households, so it is about category expansion. After that, the role of tier two is multiple washes. The households tend to segregate what is more often used clothes and use tier two for it, special clothes used tier one, so there is a role for two tiers in this portfolio to really build liquids over the next decade, and amongst the very heavy consuming liquid households, there is the entire convenience of a capsule, which gives you the benefit of strong, clean, and explosive freshness all together in one shot.
Those are the two really pillars that which we will really be spending our time to build this market and therefore assume leadership, which we already have. Now, a lot of questions in the booth, and I've just wanted to reference that some of you would think that tier two is just about dropping the price. It's not that simple. There is a role of price value equation even in tier two. And why we are betting big on Rin and why we think it's off to such a strong start is it's got a really sharp proposition of bright like new. The formulation delivers to brightness of clothes, and it delivers this value at INR 99. It's not as simple as lots of players, and we do see in the market a lot of players now without having a clear proposition coming in with price.
That's because the space is large. We do think it will consolidate as we have sharper propositions across tier one and tier two, which we have already. Not just this, it is going to require fundamental market making. So the last decade, I articulated four principles. If you look at adapting that to the next decade, it's really going to be about these four. The first is trial generation at a very large scale. What is going to be different in the next decade is our partnership and the scale that we will take our partnership. The third is the last decade had predominance of just one channel. Now there is much more channel fragmentation. And I'll share an approach that we have on home care on dealing with the fragmentation of channels.
Last but not the least, my colleagues have already spoken about social first, but I'll show you an expression of what social first means in the context of brand Surf. So if you take sampling, this is HUL's strength. When Vipul presented, he explained this about the scale. We've done it over a multi-year period. All we are doing is making sure it has more tech behind it. It is sharper, but it's still at sizable scale. And when we talk about market making on liquids, it will require the scale of sampling to make it happen. So can we have the first KV, please? So it's something that we're going to do. And you saw the scale articulated there is over 80 million households.
The second, which is going to be new in this decade particularly, and we think it's going to really help us market make liquid, is our machine manufacturer partnership. If you look at the first box on the left, you've got pretty much more than half the market with whom we've already tied up, as well as leading aggregators. And the idea is if any of you buy a washing machine of one of these brands, when the machine comes to you, it is going to come along with a sample of Surf liquid. And the person coming to install the machine is also going to be able to explain to you why Surf is the best solution to use along with the washing machine. Now, this we are doing at scale. We are also dramatically increasing the amount of sampling that we're doing through machines.
But more importantly, we are not just doing this as a good to do below the line. We are so convinced about it that this forms the heart of the communication that brand Surf has. So if I could request for the film to be shown, please. आज Surf Excel Matic Liquid और Whirlpool का match है versus पूरे दिन के जिद्दी सूखे दाग। New Surf Excel Matic की SPP और Whirlpool की Six Sense Bloom Wash Technology निकाले जिद्दी सूखे दाग। मशीन में जिद्दी सूखे दागों के लिए। So that's the second thing that we are going to deploy at scale. It's already started. The third, which is different, is in the context of really fragmenting channels. How do we leverage our scale? And this is how we're bringing price pack architecture to bear.
At the extreme left, you've got General Trade, where you really got sachets and the largest selling SKU in General Trade in case of liquids is likely to be a one-liter pouch. A very lean portfolio that more stores are able to stock up and participate in the growth of this category. As you then move the first one under Modern Trade, our standalone open format stores, where you really have the entry pack as a 1.8-liter SKU. Then you've got the conventional Modern Trade and the big banners, where you really have two liters, but you also have them in many affluent geographies. You're able to stretch the pack price to offer a four-liter. At the same time, to improve the average order value in e-commerce, you've got a 3.2-liter.
Now, we're able to leverage our scale to offer different pack sizes that suit the algorithm of each of these customers so that we get the right combination of velocity as well as maximize opportunity to increase usage. This is something that we've really done at scale through this year. And you'll see more initiatives from us within home care as we move through the years. And the next bit, of course, all of my colleagues have spoken about it. So it is a central theme. It's a capability we're building as a company, which is social first demand generation. Even in home care, where you think that life is all about traditional TV advertising, it is different. To be able to win with affluent, affluent plus, we've made a step jump in the amount we spend on digital. And we've also created assets exclusively for digital.
Before the World Cup, we did a communication which is as thematic as it can get on Surf, but as hopeful of India winning the World Cup. And of course, later on, we can always say we were part of the good luck that India won that World Cup. So what I'm going to show you is a digital ad that we really invested heavily on. And like Harman presented, the role is not just about brand say. It is also about other say. How do we do the other say in the context of cricket? Now, Surf is tied up with cricket with the idea that top performance is easily explainable and tough stain removal can be brought alive through the medium of cricket. But I'll also show you an example of other say.
It'll still speak the language of Surf, but for all you cricket fans, it'll still remind you of the moment that Gautam Gambhir is talking about. So can we have the film, please? Sir, training done. एक दिन इस मिट्टी के लिए खेलना है, ना? Yes, sir! Then show me! थोड़ी जान दिखाओ, थोड़ी आग दिखाओ, जिस मिट्टी के बने हैं हम, उस मिट्टी के दाग दिखाओ। अब ट्रेनिंग डन। इस मिट्टी के लिए दाग लगे हैं, तो दाग अच्छे हैं। So that's what we had put before the World Cup. Can we have the next one, please? 2011 World Cup final, the dream that we all chased. It wasn't only ball hitting the bag. It was as if we were etching our name into history with victory. For Gautam Gambhir, and it's a very well-placed finish this under pressure. These aren't just normal stains.
It is a symbol of grit, determination, and me giving my all. Remember, when you're playing for your country, stains don't matter. क्योंकि देश की मिट्टी के लिए दाग लगे, तो दाग अच्छे हैं। I want to wish Indian cricket team all the very best. Bring the cup home. So we're really looking to strengthen our association with cricket and build brand say as well as other say through this medium. Now, a lot of time the attention tends to be on laundry and building Surf, the master brand. But there's one more thing that we think will help us in the next decade, which is really use the power that brand WIMI has and make WIMI a master brand. The principles of it would be identical to what you've seen me explain as far as home care is concerned. So it is about building the portfolio.
It is about leading the agenda on format evolution. So again, on Vim, we are market leaders on bars, but we have a higher share in liquids because we are developing this market on liquids, not just through core Vim liquid, but as we move to seeing higher incidence of non-veg, the role of malodor removal becomes as critical along with degreasing. So therefore, there's a tier one plus variance that we have. And while the presence of dishwashers is very, very small, we are early in with the format so that as this explodes, we should be in with capsules here. So it pretty much mirrors what we've done on home care, but it's completely adapted to the category of home and hygiene. Not just here, we've also made a foray on stretching brand Vim. We've done that just about a month back.
So if any of you ask me the numbers, I'm not going to be able to tell you other than we're quite happy with the start we've made. It's such a secret that the clicker doesn't work. Yeah, so we've extended the equity of Vim to participate in floors. Some of you in the booth did ask the question, is this just about price? I think I just wanted to clarify. It's an INR 2,000 crore market, which we've looked at and felt that the disruption is not price. The disruption is really in raising the product quality that is delivered. So what we have here on Vim is superior cleaning. It has got with it probiotics, and it leaves a much stronger fragrance. The probiotics ensure that any food particles left on our floor will be wiped clean.
So on sheer cleaning credentials and on fragrance, we believe we have a superior product, and that's the confidence with which we've entered with WIMI. For us, this is an important experiment to see whether we can stretch the brand equity into spaces because this could pave the way for entry into more surfaces going forward, so in summary, as I wind up, if I had to look at a definition of success for the next decade, it's really about leading the agenda of market making and through that ensuring that in formats of the future, we have a higher market share than the formats of the past. That would ensure that the tailwind and the story of the last decade we're able to repeat in the next decade, so happy to take any questions from any of you. Hi, good afternoon. This is Harit from Investec.
So you know, a few years back in one of the presentations in detergents, you had mentioned that, you know, Surf, in terms of premiumization, you had mentioned that Surf has a 6x kind of gross profit per kg, you know, versus the mass, you know, mass end. You know, given that liquids has become such a large piece now, do you know any metric that you can suggest in terms of profitability between, say, you know, liquids and powders as you kind of premiumize the curve? And secondly, as a category today, how much faster, you know, is liquids growing versus powders? Yeah. So let me take the second question first. So liquids is growing anywhere 3-4x faster than powders. So we are seeing the segment itself explode.
On your first question, because we are operating as a portfolio, what I'm holding accountability for is the ability of the portfolio gross margin and the unit operating margin of the portfolio being held well together. So even if it means investing in a part of the portfolio to develop, I do need to find cash from the rest. But underlying home care gross margin and UoP is what I will hold myself accountable to and won't be able to dilute that. So if today we are investing in liquid, we know in lifetime value it will pay back. But I do have a strong productivity cycle running end to end, including opportunities to look at pricing on bars and powders to make sure I have the fuel to market make on liquid. That's our approach.
And one small one, you know, in the last few years, there's always been a thought that home care as a category could get impacted, say, by private labels. So incumbent brands could get impacted by private labels, you know, in modern trade or eventually in e-commerce, maybe quick commerce, but hasn't really played out like that. You know, you guys have kept growing share. So in your opinion, what is it that's worked? You know, has it been, say, your superior tech, or is it that the customer is evolving and private labels couldn't evolve at the same pace? Because a few years back, you know, this was one category which people felt was susceptible. So just your thought on it. See, if you take wherever private labels have been successful, it's organized players, not evolving product portfolio or sharpening of proposition.
If you now see home care and you take laundry, for example, it's an intensely contested category. It has a fair amount of media weight behind it. And there's a hell of a lot of technology that is going in upgrading the quality of the powder. And therefore, in this journey of whether it's powder quality or it's fragrance of liquid, there is constant evolution. And there's a huge amount of R&D resource that goes into it. And that has ensured that at one point in time, you could have a parity product, but we are literally modifying and scaling up every six to eight months. So it's that kind of investment that will be required to constantly catch up with manufacturers and requires us to also explain to consumers why they should pay a premium.
I think on both those fronts, since us as manufacturers have done a pretty decent job, a lot of private labels have tended to struggle. Sheila Rathy from Morgan Stanley. Two questions interlinked. I think the premiumization journey has played out beautifully for us. Based on the slide earlier, about 50% of the portfolio is premium. Any guidance we can think of going ahead where this could lead to? Because again, the focus is around liquids. So probably this number could be higher. Or are we thinking of redefining premiumization for this category? Because powder has Surf Excel powder has become more like a core for us. So that was the first part of my question. And the second question is, how inflation-proof has this portfolio become? Because it seems like that the premium is playing an important role for us. So we are catering to the affluent plus.
So you know how well protected we are on this portfolio. See, there are two parts. On your first question, liquids is growing much faster than powders, but powder is not a declining segment. Powder is growing, number one. Number two, over the next few years, it's a very large category, large number of people with more occasions. And therefore, behavior change takes time. So therefore, as you look through the next decade, even at the end of the next decade, powders will have a very, very important role to play. And that's how we're approaching the technology and the investment behind powders. So liquids will take as machine penetration goes up. But you know, if you look at machine itself, it's sitting at 25% penetration of the total population. Even with the most aggressive estimates, machine growths are likely to be 7%, 8%.
So you're still going to have a large part of India, in fact, the largest part of India not having access to a machine. And that means powder is here to stay. Now, on the second part, it's not inflation or deflation-proof because there is even today, the structure of the market is 45% is in mass. We have an under-indexed presence in the mass. So when there is deflation, it tends to hurt us lesser than the others. But the reality is the category is almost ubiquitous. It is 100% penetration. And therefore, there is a role for a bar. There is a role for a powder. And then there is a role for liquid, et cetera.
What it tells you is, as we make liquid and capsule, we will become more resilient, but we will never be immune because this is still going to have a large part of the population without access to machine who are going to consume and who will be a sizable part of the category. So we'll have to do both. Any sense on where the share of premiumization would be? Your guess is as good as mine. But suffice to say that if I, like Rohit mentioned, our mantra is, can we spread the market and build our contribution ahead of market? And that's how we're looking at it. Today, the market is growing at a certain rate. We want to outpace that growth, and we want to have market share in liquid ahead of market share in powder and bar. Beyond that, a number would be a guess.
It won't be that accurate. Thank you. Thanks. Two questions. First is, can INR 99 liquid detergent become the main disruption? See, Godrej Consumer under the Fab brand is also doing exceedingly well. And Indian customer generally plays between two, three brands. So if he's seeing a liquid detergent by Vim or say by Fab, he may switch. So how will you limit the cannibalization between your brands? So that could have a negative pricing. Or if say Fab becomes very aggressive here. So that was the first question. I have one more question. So on the first question, all the players on tier two comprise a really small fraction of the total liquid market. We are also at INR 99. The reality is it is going to be about who's offering a superior fragrance, who's offering the best balance of clean and fragrance at an affordable cost.
Because the larger addressable market is much bigger than me squaring off with somebody else on market share. It is a fact that in tier two, we are market leaders, but that's not something that gives us a lot of joy. What gives us real joy is this segment can itself explode. With INR 99 help, it's just one of the many factors of niche. The bigger factor is that I feel confident enough as a lady who's using bar, because a lot of people are using a bar to remove cuffs and collar dirt. Can I have a liquid that does a job as good and I don't have to take the effort of hand washing? At the same time, I expect because it's a liquid, when I take it out of the washing machine, it smells good.
That continuum requires a hell of a lot of work in R&D and a lot more of technology that will come in to raise the game of both perfume as a payoff and cleaning. We're still scratching the surface, and whoever gets this balance right will even be able to move from INR 99 to INR 125 but still grow. So in my mind, pricing is not the lead variable at this stage. At this stage, what is really two things. Can we get access in the hands of people? And that access could be a three-wash sachet, like Surf Excel sachet has done wonders for brand Surf. So I don't think it's INR 99. INR 99 and the game starts only with modern trade. This game in the South particularly is about democratizing the benefit to all. So it's going to be around the 70 ml, 50 ml sachet, INR 10.
How do we make that big? How do we then upgrade them? But it is underpinned on superior product quality, which is a journey for all of us. Second quick question is on the floor cleaning. So you have tried that earlier also with different brands. So there again, we see a very large entrant multinational player who is already there. So you are a late entrant there. So just by a slightly different formulation, will it be more gradual steps here or will you eventually be very big bang approach in this given large category? But you are a very late entrant here. So it is true we've tried twice. We've tried with Shield and we've tried with Nature Protect. So what we've done is certainly distill the learnings on both.
We felt, with the benefit of hindsight, when we look at those two launches, we tried to take the leader head-on because we went into disinfectant space, which we felt we don't have a right to win over somebody who spent so many years building that, number one. Number two, in both our past, the difference between our product performance and the market leader's performance was not so perceivable to consumers. This time, we've really invested a lot in the product, and probiotics does have a magical difference. So you've got to try to really believe the difference it makes right from the first wash, the smell you get to the ability of how clean it looks. It is perceivably markedly different. And the third is in both our attempts, we went with a new brand, and in hindsight, the pressures of the P&L didn't allow us to stay invested.
Like Rohit says, it wasn't a multi-year investment. Now that we brought it under WIMI, one thing we can assure you is this will be a multi-year investment, but we are not expecting to bust the bank overnight. We fully respect the leader and their ability in building this category over a period of time. It's not going to be miracles, but we are hoping to make steady progress with our offering. Thanks. It's from Gunjan Jain from Premji Invest. Her question is in the comparison of penetration versus turnover growth. The question is liquid penetration grew 4x from 2019 to 2023. However, the turnover increased 3x. Unlike the trajectory of Surf Excel powder, where turnover increased ahead of the penetration increase. Great question.
Look, as the time is longer, when you look at an 8-10 year horizon, as you get more comfortable with the product, multiple loads you start using with that product. So in a three-year journey, the chances are you bought a liquid once or twice, and you're trying it on special clothes because your perception this is expensive. You have certain inhibitions because it's a new format. It takes time for it. And typically, in the first three, four years, the penetration increase leads the volume increase. It's only towards the latter half where it flips over because you're really comfortable with the payoff and the cost of a new format. So you take liquids for the next five, six years, you'll see this flip as long as we are able to offer a great product quality, the likes of which we offered in a blown powder or in Comfort.
Thank you so much, Dan. Yeah, Vivek, please. Thank you. A couple of questions. One is, you mentioned revenue of 2.8x, profits 10x. If you have to think about next 5-10 years, would you say that the bottom line and top line will converge, or you still think that profits will grow faster than the top line? No, I would say that this kind of step up that we've had, you're not going to see that repeat on bottom line at 10x and top line of 2.8. It will be more top line led with consistent progress on bottom line. But we won't be able to repeat 10x again in the next decade. Sure. And one point, in fact, two comments that you made, and I'm merging the two.
You said that P&L pressure, but how can a company like Hindustan Unilever making phenomenal ROCE, ROIC, ROEs can have a P&L pressure? And in that context, when you say you are under-indexed in case of, let's say, mass end, are you reluctant in focusing too much on that because you want customers to premiumize? So if something is coming from your stable, if you are very aggressive at the mass end, then that will stop the premiumization. Basically, the moot point is, why shouldn't you go all out at the mass end? And as long as you are generating returns on incremental returns, which are substantially above cost of capital, which would be the case, then why not go all out? Yeah, Vivek, the context of P&L I'd used in the context of investing behind a new brand when we did the attempt on floors in the past.
Because a new brand will really require a hell of a lot of money to be able to generate even basic level of brand awareness. And that was in answer to the question on this time, what is different is having learned from the ability of home care brands to stretch the equity, we think we are more efficient by stretching WIMI equity. So I was mentioning this in the context of investing behind Nature Protect versus continuing to invest behind WIMI. Having said that, on the rest of the part, it is true that if there is an opportunity, for example, even in home and hygiene, we have invested significantly, even at low margins, to build the category with Vim bar INR 10.
Because once consumers moved from rock and as their mode of cooking changed, we knew this is the place where you invest over the lifetime, you will get better. So it is not that we are going to shy away from investing, but there are certain segments which we have seen either today or under any condition of inflation or deflation, they're just not viable for us to play. Some of those segments we've decided we won't play, but we'll play at the next price tier a bit more aggressively. So to that extent, we do have a strong balance sheet for us to take bets over multi-year. But like I said, and like Rohit started, we've got to be clear it's a multi-year bet. If it's a multi-year bet, we will go all in. Got it. All the best. Thank you. Welcome, everyone.
The mic is really for all those people who are joining online so my name is Dr. Vibhav Sanzgiri. I'm the Executive Director for R&D and my job has been made a lot easier by all my colleagues who spoke about all the wonderful R&D technology that you have in all your products but let me start by just talking a few things about it. For everybody who's sitting in the room, as well as everybody who's online, we have demos which you're going to be seeing so live product demos out here. There's no need for you to get up and walk around. We're going to have somebody who's actually going to be shooting this live and broadcasting this on the two TVs that you have on either side.
If still at the end of it, you would like to go up and see them for yourself, you're more than welcome to do that. All right, so let me just quickly start out, and I think Rohit mentioned this. This is really a hallowed ground. This is where R&D started, and therefore, it's been more than 60 years of category creating science, technology, and innovations, both for HUL and Unilever. We're very proud to have 820-plus scientists, and we are 100% gender balanced at all work levels. We have been designing for winning in many Indias, as well as designing for aspiring India, and we have four key big technology platforms that we leverage, which is Biosciences Next Generation Materials, driving premiumization, so all aspects of it, sensorials, products, fragrances, flavors, and so on.
And then, of course, what you heard Shiva talk about, which is India for India Foods. We are investing to build a new world-leading digital-first fragrance creation house. You would have seen this as part of the Unilever CMD. And what we're doing is this is going to be set up in the U.K., in the U.S., and in India. And lastly, we have been investing significantly in transforming AI, digital, and in silico capabilities for driving speed and agility. And rather than talk about that, what I thought we'll do is to just show you a very quick video that captures how we are transforming the speed with which we're bringing innovations into market. In the blink of an eye, the world changes. New needs and trends emerge, and the landscape of consumer goods evolves.
Through bold and disruptive innovations at unprecedented speed, HUL and Unilever R&D are driving tangible business success. To create products that solve real consumer needs, our AI hub processes millions of data points from e-commerce, social media, and quick commerce, transforming them into actionable insights for targeted product launches. Cutting-edge AI models help us spot trends, uncover new product opportunities, and speed up prototyping. Our exclusive partnership with Microsoft allows our scientists to use cutting-edge AI and modeling tools to stay ahead in innovation. R&D Assistant, our in-house AI copilot, taps into over a century of Unilever R&D expertise to streamline experiments and boost research productivity. With Azure Quantum Elements and high-performance computing, our scientists run millions of virtual experiments in minutes, dramatically accelerating the discovery of new materials and molecular screening.
In our automated labs of the future, collaborative robots assist us in our experiments, freeing our experts to focus on creative scientific exploration and breakthrough innovations. Our labs connect to Unilever's Data Lab, providing rich process data for predictive modeling and simulations. At our advanced manufacturing centers, digital twins simulate real factory conditions, predicting potential manufacturing challenges and determining optimal parameters to avoid them. With this change, we have reduced our scale-up time by up to 50%, creating a seamless digital manufacturing network between R&D and supply chain. From idea to launch, HUL and Unilever R&D are pioneering in silico-first R&D to bring superior, sustainable, and desirable products to market before anyone else. So that's a running summary of what we are doing in terms of transforming the speed of what we do. But this is really what we do.
And if you really start by saying, look, we've established at a time that we were designing for really emerging India. And it's probably a bit of a surprise to you in terms of knowing that in this particular product now that you know is Glow & Lovely, we were the first in the world to actually use niacinamide or vitamin B3 and UVA and UVB sunscreens for skincare. Today, it is now a commoditized commodity because after our patents expired, but we were the very first to do it. We created the entire category of what we call non-soap detergents, both for dishwash as well as for laundry. You've heard about Pears. We were the first to bring in silica gel transparent toothpaste into India, leveraging Unilever technology that was developed in the U.S.
You heard about the way we've been designing for many Indias, which is taking into account the very specific needs of consumers, differences in water quality, differences in terms of consumer preferences, and so on, and therefore designing products that are suited to them, and our entire focus is now really in terms of how we are combining this in addition with designing for aspiring and affluent India, and what we do out here is that Unilever, in terms of both Mumbai and Bangalore, are part of the Unilever Global Lab Network, and so these are our six global R&D labs, and all of us collaborate together in terms of driving new technologies and new insights, and so we bring to bear the power of almost 5,000 scientists worldwide and 20,000 patents that really support our entire in-market as well as our new innovations.
This is really our sort of model that we use and our strategy for innovations. At the very heart of it is our focus, which is really about saying we want to innovate boldly for people and planet. As part of the Aspire journey, and you heard everybody talk about this, in terms of focus, we are focusing on the big bets. In terms of Excel, we are looking at the way we can drive unmissable brand superiority to superior products, superior packaging, superior sensorials, and so on. As part of Accelerate, how can you accelerate brand new disruptive technologies to bring to bear to blockbuster innovations? There are three big technology next-generation platforms that we are working on. The first one is microbiome, and we're going to talk about it today. Biotechnology, we're going to talk about that today as well.
Next-generation materials, which we will also cover. Then, of course, what I spoke about, which is really about our capabilities, which is digital-first, the fragrance creation house, premium packaging, and of course, partnerships, because that really allows us to bring a lot of the outside in. What I'm going to do today, we did a hard choice in terms of saying out of all the innovations that we have, we have decided to choose these four because we heard a lot of questions coming from you about them. We're going to talk about what we are doing in terms of really transforming the agenda for hair for B&W. What is it that we are doing in terms of driving? You just heard Shiva talk about it in terms of saying specialist nutrition. Therefore, what's the science behind it?
You heard Tan talk about the new ultra pro floor cleaner technology, so we'll do that, and then, of course, your favorite, which is Stratos, and at the end of it, all of this is really based on a combination of local insights, global technologies that really power blockbuster innovations, so with this, what we are now going to do is talk about each of the segments, so like I said, feel free to look in that direction, but we have a real close-up that you will see on the TVs next to you, as well as the teams who are sitting and joining us virtually, so let me first start out with the first one, which is identifying the root cause of hair loss, and these are really the big insights.
So anybody who's had hair loss like me will realize that hot and humid weather actually sort of weakens the hair, and it actually weakens the anchorage of the hair and disrupts the scalp barrier. What is critical to understand is that that 80% of hair loss actually happens at the root, not at the fiber. And unfortunately, most of the ordinary shampoos and oils, they only work on strengthening the fiber. They don't work on the root. And this is the reason why we said we needed to work on a technology that would give us a hair therapy regime that was targeted at strengthening the hair from the root. I have a video now that just talks to you about what is the technology that we have that does this.
Unilever R&D has developed a blockbuster technology containing two actives: niacinamide for revitalizing scalp and zinc peptides technology for fortifying roots. This blockbuster technology targets the hard-to-reach hair follicle. Now, people can tackle hair fall at the root with a readily available serum. During a hair follicle's natural life cycle, this technology works both during the growth phase and the lead-up to shedding, so hair grows faster and encourages protein to form healthy, strong follicle structures. Throughout the lead-up to shedding, enzyme activity increases, breaking down the glue until the hair is loose enough to be pulled away by washing and brushing. Zinc peptide helps inhibit the enzyme activity so the glue remains firm and the hair is held in place for longer, reducing excess hair fall effectively in a month, so this is really the technology that we have behind it.
And now we have a demo that we are going to demonstrate to you. So if we can just switch to the demo camera, please. So we have Dr. Supriya, and what we have got out there is an example of really how your hair is within the follicle itself. And what you can see out here is in one of them, Supriya is going to be adding the magic ingredients that are present in our Dove Serum product, as well as in the other one, we're going to be adding a competitor product. Once we have done that, we are going to be adding to that the enzyme that we spoke about that accelerates the loosening of the hair from the follicle itself. And then, with a little bit of incubation, we will show you really what this product delivers.
So while Supriya does that experiment, let me just quickly shift to a slide that gives you an idea about what is the kind of work that we have already done on this particular product. So what we have done is we have done an independent clinical study on scalp serum. There is 10% deeper penetration of the active into the scalp. 92% of the consumers have observed improved hair density. 98% of consumers have observed a healthier scalp. And this is an incredibly bold claim that we're making of 10,000 more hair strands in eight weeks. And with this, Supriya, if you're ready. All right, let's go ahead. And there, you can see that when you don't have the magic serum material, this is really what happens to your hair, whereas in the other case, you have the ability to fight back the enzyme that causes excess shedding.
This is the latest serum that's going into the market, which is the scalp hair therapy. With this, let me then switch now to the next one, which is our adult nutrition and specialist nutrition product. I think for anybody who's had a family history of this or has suffered it themselves, we are the diabetes capital of the world. One in seven Indians are actually diabetic. What's even worse is that 42 million, 44 million people are diabetic but are undiagnosed. Scientific evidence suggests that poor gut health is what is linked to diabetes. The reason for that is that seven out of 10 Indians consume lower fiber than what is recommended. That leads to this poor gut health.
Now, a lot of times, people think that in order to basically counter diabetes, all you need to do is to consume a product that contains less or zero added sugar, and that's not true. In reality, what you require is something that controls the breakdown of food, that controls the passage of the food into the intestine, because this is what leads to sugar spikes, and a lot of times, while people will produce products that do not contain added sugar, a lot of times, they will add other materials to that, which actually are high GI or glycemic index in nature, and so what it does is that it still creates the spikes in your system and doesn't really help in terms of control of diabetes, so what you're looking for is a holistic approach in terms of how you do this.
So again, if you can just switch to the camera out there, what we have done in this case is that we looked at two natural fiber-based materials. So guys, if you can just switch to that thing. And this is really what comes from two sources. So we have one called Nutriose and another one called Fibosol. And these are powders. But what's interesting is that when they combine with your gastric juices and liquid in your stomach, they get formed into a gel. And that gel is really what works the magic. So let me show you that in a video. Nutriose forms a viscous gel in the stomach and delays passage of food from the stomach into the intestine. Thus, it helps to feel fuller for longer. Fibosol combines with food and traps glucose, releasing it slowly. Hence, high-fiber food delays the glucose absorption.
Horlicks Diabetes Plus, with dual-fiber blend of Nutriose and Fibosol, makes one feel less hungry and manages blood sugar levels. And as I told you, what this also does is that it also helps in terms of acting as a prebiotic for your good bugs. And as a consequence of that, that further helps in terms of helping manage diabetes. And if you look at the results that we have on this one, this is the highest fiber, high protein, zero added sugar, and maltodextrin. And we have a demo that we are just basically going to be running out there. So this is a reagent. And what the reagent does is that it is an indicator of glycemic index. So if you have any material inside the product that has a high glycemic index, it will change color. It will become purple in color.
Whereas if the material doesn't have a high glycemic index, it will continue to maintain its color, so on the right-hand side, we've ended up putting in a competitor product, and you can see that it changes color, and this is one of the issues that you have with a lot of the diabetic products that are there in the market, that they're actually very high GI in nature, and you can see on the left-hand side, this is the Horlicks product, and it's low GI, and what we have done is we have conducted a real-life clinical with the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, it's a three-month clinical that we have done, and it's evidence to suggest, and I think Shiva mentioned this, this is the only diabetic product that has been made and tested with Indian consumers.
And it has shown to do a remission of all the five diabetes markers in three months. But more importantly, we've measured the blood sugar levels of people who have started taking this. And in a single use, you actually see a drop in blood sugar levels. So this is what we have in terms of a highly differentiated technology for specialist adult nutrition. Let me then move on to the other side, which is our floor cleaners. So again, what makes the floor 100% clean? And everybody who, like me, has done a lot of floor scrubbing, particularly during COVID, will recognize all of these issues. So 80% of the consumers encounter tough stains on the floor daily. Dirt remains particularly inside the grout, the area of the space between the tiles, very hard-to-reach spaces. And after you've used ordinary floor cleaners, they leave behind marks on the floor.
Therefore, you require a floor cleaner that really delivers 100% clean floors. So again, out here, we've combined two very, very differentiated technologies. We've combined a polymer that prevents your floors from getting dirty. And we've combined that with probiotics. So anybody who's ever taken curd or any of the things in terms of settling a stomach, well, this is pretty much like that for the floors. And what it does is they synthesize enzymes. And those enzymes basically eat up all the dirt. And which is the reason why the kind of cleaning that you get from this is absolutely fantastic. Let me show you a video of the technology. And then we're going to have Pradeep actually do a demo for this. Tough stains on floor need great efforts to clean. Introducing Vim Floor Cleaner with revolutionary Ultra Pro Dual Action Cleaning Technology.
This technology gives impeccable, spotless clean. Its unique polymer prevents dirt, dust, and oily stains from sticking to the floor, making it easy to clean. It also ensures streak-free clean and faster drying. Ultra Pro is infused with smart probiotics that deliver deep clean even in hard-to-reach areas. New Vim Ultra Pro, a dual-action cleaning technology that gives 100% removal of tough stains for complete clean floors. OK. So with this, what we'll do is we'll switch now to the demo. So if you can again project. So what you can see out here is tiles that had exactly the same tough, difficult-to-remove stains. And you can see that in terms of a competitor product versus what you see with the Vim product.
If you switch now to the next visual, to the left-hand side, you can see that in the case of an ordinary floor cleaner, it leaves behind streaks and marks. Whereas in the case of Vim, there is absolutely none of that. Then let us show you a live demo. So probably like me, if you're a very big fan, you favor Indian pickles, or if you like hot chili oil, these are the kind of difficult stains that are very, very hard to remove from a floor surface. So what Pradeep is doing is he's putting chili oil there. We're now going to be putting out there one of our competitor products. So we're basically putting the same quantity out there in order to dislodge this from the surface of the tile.
And then we are going to do the same thing in terms of putting the Vim new floor cleaner on the other side. And while this is happening, I'm just going to be putting up a slide out here that tells you the kind of claims that we are making on this product. So keep your eyes on what Pradeep is doing. So he's just put the floor cleaner on both sides. And then we're going to be using some amount of water in order to basically just rinse off that material from the floor. So this is typically what you do with a mop and try to get rid of it. And this is what happens with a competitor product with a very, very difficult-to-remove oily stain. And then on the other side, this is what we have when you use the Vim floor cleaner.
And you can see that when you mop that with a liquid, basically your stains are gone. So this is really the power of what we have in terms of our technology. And no wonder that we can end up making some of these incredibly difficult claims. And with this, let me then come to the crowd favorite, which is on Stratos. And look, for a lot of people, I think soaps are something that many of our consumers probably is the only beauty and personal care product that they use. And therefore, the question that we asked ourselves is, why should a soap only clean? Why can't it give you real skin care? And that's where we started out with this entire journey. And I think there were some key things that we needed to basically overcome. The first one is about saying high TFM equals better quality.
That's absolutely not true. It's basically saying a high amount of soap is good for your skin. That's not true. The second is that when you look at it, only 25% of this TFM is actually required for lather and cleaning. If you have a brick, it's absolutely impossible for you to put some skin care actives in it unless you take something out. That is why we decided that we wanted to reinvent the humble soap bar. Now, obviously, don't believe me when I tell you about the first two points. Let me therefore use this example to bring it to life. This is firstly the Bureau of Indian Standards. The Bureau of Indian Standards has a standard called the bathing bar. This is what it says right at the beginning of it.
It says the performance of a soap depends more on the type of fatty matter that is present rather than the total fatty matter of the soap. This is not me saying it. This is the Bureau of Indian Standards. If you look out here, what we have done out here is to basically put down what is the quality of lather and the quantity of lather that you get from different products. So the first one is a grade one toilet soap. This is the kind of lather that it delivers. If you look at many of the premium soaps that are present in the market, including our own Pears, for example, these are products that contain 40% of TFM. And you can see that the lather that they generate is equal to, if not better, than a 76 TFM soap. You heard about body washes.
I'm sure all of you have used a body wash at some point of time in your life. Surprise, surprise, it only contains 15 TFM. And yet, it delivers better lather than a soap does, and then anybody who's ever used a self-former, please look at it as it comes out of the self-former. It contains only 10% of TFM. And yet, it ends up giving you the best quantity of lather, so therefore, this shows you that there is no correlation between a number of a TFM, but more importantly, it depends on what is that TFM made up of. And so therefore, to bring to life, what is the technology that we have in Stratos? Let me run this demo video. Introducing our breakthrough multi-year technology, Stratos. A revolutionary patented combination of plant-based polysaccharides and skin care actives forms Stratos.
Having a multimodal action, Stratos provides an exceptional in-use consumer experience with an enhanced creamy lather and fragrance, and also delivers barrier strength, hydration, glow, and enhanced germ protection. On the skin, Stratos reduces UV-induced stress by promoting cellular repair. And bars with this technology are proven gentler on the skin than high TFM soaps. Our skin's own microbiome secretes enzymes, which help metabolize Stratos to boost skin moisturization and barrier properties. Stratos bars deliver clinically proven superior glow and even tone, as proven through dermatologist-conducted clinical trials. Tested extensively with over 80,000 consumers worldwide, Stratos delivered superior consumer ratings over in-market products and higher TFM competitors globally. Our AMC and investing in supply chain has resulted in rapidly upscaling all our soap lines.
In addition to multiple publications and patents, global experts have also endorsed the breakthrough: efficient design with less wasteful palm oil, milder and clinically efficacious, more sustainable, and with less GHG. Dermatologically accredited by Skin Health Alliance, the first soap globally. Come, experience the skin cleansing revolution. So now what we're going to do is we're going to basically show you three things. So the first one, if you can just put on the video, is basically this is almost a schematic that shows you on the top high TFM soap. And on the lower one, where is it that we have actually replaced some of the materials with Stratos, with the yellow portions as you can see them. What we are doing in this particular study is that we're using extremely hard water. This is 45 FH, or basically more than 1,500 parts per million of total dissolved solids.
This is among the hardest kind of water that you would get. Typically, Salt Lake City in Kolkata, et cetera, would have this kind of water, and what we are doing out here is that we're using, in order to minimize any sort of concern about saying we used to use it, rubbed it differently, et cetera, we're going to use a machine to do all this work, so we are putting grated soap in that water. We're now using two machines, so basically just mixing that up in terms of creating the lather, and as you see it, basically you will understand why we are telling you that this is a product that delivers superior value, long-lasting, impactful fragrance, superior creamy lather, even in hard water, and superior skin benefits. Yeah? So we are continuing to basically do this.
Please have a look at both of the jars where we have added the same amount of soap, and we're mixing it with the hard water. I think you can see the difference in terms of the amount of lather that has been produced in the case of Stratos, which is the white one on the right, and the high TFM grade one soap, which is on the left, but the PSA resistance is this. We're now going to filter this through a filter mesh, and the reason why we want to do this is because we want to say something that we have been basically talking about, which is that when you have a high TFM soap, there's a very large part of that which is insoluble soap that does nothing for you, nothing for your skin, and simply gets flushed down the drain.
This is the example where you can see out here on the left-hand side; this is the insoluble soap that remains behind. And that's the other side, which is Stratos. So that is the summary of what we had to say to you. So once again, bringing you back to our closing slide. And with this, I'm happy to take any questions. Yeah. Sorry, I'm just going to ask you to use a mic so that the people online can hear the question as well. Thank you. Not about these four examples that you have given, because those are very specific functionalities. But just personally to you, I want to ask, especially in case of BPC or beauty, where a lot of D2C companies have emerged and INR 100-200 crore top line. And they make all sort of claims.
And suddenly, caffeine has become a big one for one particular company and so on and so forth. As an R&D, do you feel that consumers appreciate lesser of what you do in the background? Because it's all about marketing, because that's how the internet has done things. Do you agree with that? So look, I think I wouldn't like to comment on what competitors are doing. I think we have a very, very clear standard in terms of how we operate. So whether you saw the diabetes bit, whether you saw the thing on the hair, whether you saw the amount of publications that we've done on Stratos, for example, every single thing, we have an internal standard and an internal code of principles that we will ensure that the claims that we make are fully defendable.
And for that, we use a variety of different methods, in some cases clinicals, in some cases technical studies, in some cases in silico methods, and so on. But we never believe in terms of sort of making a claim that we can't support. I think there are two aspects to it. And I think earlier, probably, I think Whirlpool referred to it as well when he spoke. Is that there are some things, for example, that we will advertise to the consumer. There are some things that we believe you should perceive yourself. And that is what's going to create that repeat purchase for you because you can see this product is working for you. And which is the reason why for 90 years, we have brands that are absolutely loved by consumers. So that's the way we sort of operate.
And this is the reason why I think we have staying power. And just the other one, is there a pressure from your sales and marketing to match the pace of some of the smaller competition who can quickly overnight come up with a product? I think everyone believes unquestionably in the thing that we spoke about, which is Unmissable Brand Superiority. I think the only reason why we want to launch something in the market is we are absolutely certain that this is the best that you can put out. The second is that I think you see more ownership for the technology. From each of my marketeers, if you heard them talk about it, every one of them spoke about that outstanding technology and what R&D is doing for them even more eloquently than I could have. So it just tells you I don't think there's any pressure.
I think there would be pressure if we didn't give them really superior products. So just to follow up, how do you solve for the speed in today's world where expectations keep coming up with something new all the time? So look, what we have done is we've basically looked at speed in terms of saying, where are the three areas that we can actually improve on speed? If you look at it traditionally, you ended up doing a lot of lab experiments. Those lab experiments took you years before you found something that actually worked. Today, we showed you the work that we're doing with Microsoft, et cetera, and Data Lab and the Azure Cloud. And what we can do out there is that we use artificial intelligence to screen a large number of molecules and actually predict what formulations would do.
The second is that we've been looking at it in terms of saying, look, what are the next trends? What's the next big thing that will come? At what point does it become an inflection point and so on? So we are using the AI hub that we have created, which is basically giving us this information and that we can analyze and therefore say this is going to be the next big thing. The third is that the third bottleneck is really how quickly can we test with consumers? And we now have always-on consumer panels. So therefore, we can quickly, very rapidly test prototypes and work with the consumers to actually sequentially improve on those products. And the last one was really how long does it take once you've established a technology to scale it up into the last factory?
And that's where we've created the Advanced Manufacturing Center. So that allows us to do very, very quick physical and digital twinning of the factories. And you'll see that when you talk to Yogesh in terms of just how we work with supply chain in terms of cutting down the time. So what we are doing is we are just looking at every single element and saying, what do we do in order to cut down the time out there? So that's the way we are working. Thank you. Sure. Just another question on Stratos. So you mentioned that you need to take something out of the product to put something in to make space for something value add. So in Lux, I see there is the vitamin C and vitamin E, which you have put in. Apart from that, is there anything else that you have put into Lux?
And what about Lifebuoy? Is there anything different in Lifebuoy which you have done? So what we have done is we have actually got a combination of materials. One of them is called 12-hydroxystearic acid. We call the technology internally as ARMAS. It's a multimodal technology. It does everything from improving your barrier to increasing your skin's immunity. And if you find that quite fancy, I can do a separate session on that for you. But your skin actually synthesizes natural antibacterial peptides and so on that kill pathogenic organisms. So actually, this boosts that. So what we have done out here is in both Lux and Lifebuoy, we've created a cocktail of some of these ingredients: 12-hydroxystearic acid, what we call prolipids, and so on, glycerin, which is a really fantastic moisturizer, as well as a prebiotic in its sense.
And along with that, we've then looked at a cocktail of natural antimicrobials for Lifebuoy. In the case of Lux, we've added the vitamin C and the vitamin E. That is really because we needed to boost beauty here. But in this case, in Lifebuoy, we boosted the germ kill by tenfold. And so we presented this at the World Congress of Infectious Diseases. We have presented this at the Indian Institute of IPHA. So we presented this at multiple places. So we boosted the germ kill benefits that you get out of Lifebuoy as well. So it's done in both cases. Are you boosting in the Lifebuoy handwash as well, or this is only? So the technology that you use for handwash is slightly different from the technology that you use in a soap.
Because what happens is the concentration of the product that comes in contact with your hand is different. In case of a handwash, it's more concentrated. In the case of a soap, although you rub the soap on your body, what comes in contact with your skin is an 8% solution. And therefore, you need to have a very different technology that works in this versus a handwash, so it's a different technology that we use out there. We have just a couple of questions. On these technologies, does it give you a head start as a marketer? And ultimately, these things somebody else will also do? Or are they really patent protected? Like, let's say, Fair and Lovely, you gave an example which you protected for a long time. How do you distinguish, let's say, between these four? What would be easy to copy?
So in all of these technologies, what we really have is that the combination of ingredients that we use, so there are multiple ways in which you do IP protection. Firstly, the combination of ingredients, we file patents on them. And therefore, that particular combination, like I explained to you, that combination nobody else can use. So that's number one. Number two is that a lot of times, it is how you make it. And many of those are actually trade secrets. So only we know how to actually make it. So there's a sequence of addition. There's a sequence of mixing. And if you don't get it right, you're going to come out with something quite awful.
The third barrier that we have is, in this case of Stratos, for example, or in many of these cases, we've had to basically upgrade our supply chain in terms of making this thing, and that's a substantial investment that you need to do in order to do this. So there are multiple barriers that you end up putting in so that in some cases, the product, typically, a patent gives you about 14-20 years of protection, and then what you do is all of these other things ensure that nobody else can accurately replicate it, which is the reason why nobody else makes Pears the way we do. Nobody else makes Surf the way we do, and that's because the original patents of this have expired. But the trade secrets, the supply chain secrets, all of that is what we have, and one quick question on Stratos.
The other concern initially was on the structure of the soap. You didn't mention much about that. So any concerns on that front? Not at all. See, look, I think this is what we've been trying to explain. If you see out there, and that's the reason why we have that schematic to show you that, it's not a filler. Because in the past, what used to happen in the 1970s and 1980s was people would take out the oil and add a filler. And that filler had no connection with the oil. So it was like two different materials sitting inside a soap. And therefore, that would result in a major issue in terms of both the performance as well as in terms of the structure. In this case, the way we've created the structure is actually you can see those metallic links.
That's basically some of the technology that we have in there that actually links the soap up together. As a consequence of that, we have data to show this product lasts much longer. It actually soaks and mashes much lesser. It's a bar of soap. And please try it for yourself. It's as hard as anything else that you want to try out in the market. And yet, because you're creating the space, your lathering component comes out much faster. As a consequence of that, you actually see much faster lather. And the last bit of it is Stratos has a very unique property. It sits on the barrier of bubbles. And what it does is it doesn't allow the bubbles to collapse. As a consequence, the lather becomes far more creamier.
So that is why I say when we say we have filed 20 patents on this, when we have published in top-notch journals and peer-reviewed journals, we've gone and presented at the European Association of Dermatology, JDADERM, American Association of Dermatology, all of these places, Skin Health Alliance, which has never accredited a soap in its entire history for the first time has accredited us, it just tells you that this is solid science. Thank you all. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and before starting, just wanted to tell one thing. The recording is a little bit—I will say this. Don't do this because we will put this presentation in any way on the site, and then you will get all the material which we'll be sharing today. You know my name. I take care of supply chain here. Yeah.
Before talking about supply chain program and capability, I really wanted to give you a brief update about overview of our operations. We talked about in the morning; we have a multi-category, multi-format distributed network comprising 28 owned factories, 50-plus contract manufacturing, producing 75-plus billion units every year. Our operations span over 78-plus entities. We deploy almost 10,000 trucks every day to move our stock across the value chain up to the trade. We started measuring manufacturing agility through the DBNR. DBNR stands for days between the next run. We are really tracking good, which current DBNR is less than three, which is the industry best. When I'm saying less than three means our A-class SKU, which contributes to the 80% of turnover being produced every third day in our plant. We are the best in class in supply chain cost.
And very proud to share that two of our factories, one in Silvassa, one in Sonepat factory, has been awarded by the World Economic Forum for the Digital Lighthouse Award, which is really a very, very prestigious award in terms of the digital measurement and the progress. And as of now, we are using the 96% green energy in all the plant. And out of maybe 28, 10 plant will be the 100% green energy. Rohit talked about in the morning. I will repeat the same thing. Supply chain has been the competitive advantage for the business. And if you see over the decade, our key supply chain KPI moved in the right direction, improved the service almost 300 basis points.
At the same time, we reduced the inventory almost 30% and released the cash for the company, improved the supply chain cost 400-plus basis points in the last 10 years. Our DBNR I talked about improved our manufacturing agility in the last 5 years because we started measuring this agility in 2019. Almost 70% we improved the manufacturing agility. Renewable energy, currently we are using 96%. And that's really improved is 5,000-plus basis point. Our managerial gender balance got improved almost 2,000 basis points in the last 10 years. We are also improving gender balance at the shop floor. More than 1,300 female employees are working at factories nowadays. In one of the factories, you will see actually we'll talk about our gender diversity at shop floor is more than 40%.
Supply chain strategy is completely aligned with the business strategy built on the four strategic pillars: superior value, superior availability, superior product, and superior care for people and planning. These pillars are supported by the digital end-to-end transformation. You have seen by the previous slide how the supply chain performance has really created value for the business. To unlock the next level of S-curve of the efficiency, we have been leveraging the next-gen technology and the digital tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence. Few of these capabilities we will share today under the superior value and the superior availability section. With that, over to Akshay. Akshay, take care of manufacturing excellence and lead digital for us in the supply chain. Thank you, Yogesh. Good afternoon, everyone.
Over the next few minutes, I'm going to take you through how we are delivering fuel for growth for the business through a superior value pillar as part of our supply chain strategy. Now, while we do a lot of work as part of our supply chain team to dial up the savings funnel for our business, but today, in the interest of time, I'm going to talk about two big initiatives in this space. One is dark operations, wherein we are building digitally advanced sites to move towards lights-out manufacturing in just complex manufacturing cascades. And second, I'm going to talk about how we are resetting our manufacturing and distribution footprint as part of program Nakshatra. Let me first talk about dark operations.
Now, I'm extremely happy to share that as part of our Digital Foundation program, we have built a very strong cybersecure infrastructure enabled with IoT sensors across our network of machines across our 28-plus factories. Now, the data that is coming out of these IoT sensors, with the help of that data, we've actually built more than 20-plus digitally advanced use cases across our factories, as you can see on the left-hand side of your board. These use cases are addressing things around safety, quality, productivity, wastage, and many other operational KPIs of the factory, and with the help of this, we have actually unlocked the next level of efficiencies in our manufacturing locations.
Having built a very strong foundation layer across our manufacturing locations, we are now leveraging data coming out from these tools and use cases to build a layer of intelligence on top of each of these use cases. These are providing actionable insights and recommendations to our shop floor employees working on the lines, which is helping them improve performance of the machines in actual real time. Not just that, we've also invested in more than 500-plus cameras for AI-enabled cameras for improvement of safety and quality in our operations, and at the same time, we're leveraging data coming out from all these applications to develop several digital twins in our complex manufacturing processes to improve the yield and unlock capacity for growth in minimal CapEx investment.
Not just this, we're now taking the next big leap in combining the strong AI-enabled foundation of digital in our factories with advanced physical automation to deliver dark operations in our manufacturing locations. What I'm going to do now is to take you through a small AV of how we've implemented this cutting-edge concept of dark operations in one of our manufacturing locations in Gandhidham that makes Dove Bar. Welcome to Gandhidham Factory, where we manufacture Dove soap and have successfully adopted this cutting-edge approach. Starting with the process, we use a line loss capturing tool to monitor line losses and OEE in real time. To ensure first-time right batch of superior product quality, we have implemented a digital twin in our process. This technology helps optimize process and predict outcomes. The digital twin model prescribes optimal process parameters in real time, ensuring right quality.
In packing section, AI-enabled cameras are used for real-time identification and rejection of both in-pack and on-pack defects, ensuring zero quality defects. Further in this transformative initiative, we have integrated smart robotics to streamline labor-intensive tasks, ultimately optimizing end-to-end efficiency across the production line. With these advancements, we have established a fully automated manufacturing setup where production activities can be carried out with near-zero human intervention by integrating advanced technologies such as AI, robotics, and digital twins to create an efficient production environment. At the core of this next-generation technological advancement is a centralized control room, which allows control room operations to remotely manage the entire production process, providing them with real-time visibility into line performance and process parameters.
पहले हमको बेस बनाने के लिए मिक्सर फ्लोर में जाना पड़ता था। अभी हम लोग कॉकपिट की वजह से 100% शेड्यूल के साथ बेस बनाते हैं। पहले मैं लाइन ऑपरेटर था, अभी मैं कंट्रोल रूम ऑपरेटर बन गया हूं। With these multiple interventions, we have successfully established Dark Operations in our Dove line. Now, digital transformation is all about creating superior value for the business. I'm extremely pleased to share that over the last few years, we have been able to unlock our equipment efficiencies by more than 400 basis points. We have improved our manpower productivity by almost 17%, enabled by several AI solutions like smart manning and auto manning. And last but not the least, in the space of sustainability, we have improved our energy consumption per ton by almost 14%, enabled by several digitally advanced energy management solutions and twins in this utility space.
All in all, this entire digital transformation across our manufacturing locations is helping us unlock the next level of value potential for the business, and we are continuously leveraging the next-gen technology to ensure that we keep doing value unlock as we move forward. Let me now talk about a second big initiative under the savings program for us, which is Project Nakshatra. Now, Project Nakshatra aims at resetting our distribution and manufacturing footprint in line with the changing demand patterns across the country. As part of program Nakshatra, we are building multi-category, multi-format, closer to demand center sites so that we can improve agility and resilience in our operations and at the same time reduce cost to serve and cost of operations in our network.
As part of program Nakshatra, we are also building next-gen manufacturing locations, which are digitized, automated, and at the same time gender-balanced as we move forward in this journey. What I'm going to do now is to take you through a small example of how we have implemented Project Nakshatra in one of our largest factories in Central UP, which is Sumerpur. Earlier, Sumerpur used to make very limited formats, and then, because of that, the regionalized demand of Central UP was not being serviced, and we had to cross those from other regions, thereby increasing our distribution cost. Post Project Nakshatra, with a kind of technological and technical intervention and the next-generation infrastructure that we have established in Sumerpur factory, we are now making 2x the number of formats versus what we were making pre-Nakshatra.
This is helping us improve agility and resilience in our operations and at the same time reduce speed to shelf in case of a volatile demand. What we've also done as part of Project Nakshatra in Sumerpur is that we have built up a very highly advanced 20,000-pallet positions, ASRS-based DC, which is completely eliminating the need for an additional distribution center in between, and we are directly serving our customers from the factory, thereby reducing our distribution cost and improving speed to market. The best part about this whole transformation program in Sumerpur has been about how we have created an ecosystem in and around the factory to create employment for more than 40% women workforce in our operations.
Now, the kind of transformation that you saw in Sumerpur that I just spoke about, we have done similar transformation in various forms and shapes across the network of our factories, as you can see on the right-hand side of your map. These are the factories located across the length and breadth of the country, which have been transformed in various forms and shapes across as part of Project Nakshatra. As a result, we have been able to increase our formats per site by almost 30%, improve direct dispatch to customers by almost 108%, reduce our FG distance travel by 21%, and last but not the least, we have kind of, in a very CapEx-optimal manner, invested in delivering more than 600,000 tons of capacity for growth. All in all, this project aims to deliver more than INR 2,000 crores of value for the business over the next decade.
Obviously, in the last few years, also this number has come up. Now, given the success of this program in Nakshatra 1.0, we have now launched Nakshatra 2.0 and 3.0 so that we can continuously reset our manufacturing and distribution footprint as we move forward. Let me now hand over to Rajshri to take you through the superior availability pillar. Thank you, Akshay, and good afternoon, everyone. On the superior availability pillar, we will talk about two distinct capabilities that we as supply chain have created to enable growth for business. For HUL, it is imperative to tap into the potential of the channels of the future, which is the e-commerce channel. Now, while this channel comes with a higher growth, it also comes with a higher complexity and volatility. Therefore, to solve for this in 2021, we conceptualized our nano factory.
In 2021, we established our first Nano Factory for our Beauty and Wellbeing business. Since then, we have established seven different Nano Factories between 2021 and 2024, which are servicing across all five of our business groups. These Nano Factories were established with the concept of enabling small-scale manufacturing at competitive cost. In the last seven years, we've made more than 500 SKUs on these lines. It has supported more than 150 innovations. Some of those packs are before you to see that these all packs have come out of our Nano Factories. It has also enabled us to unlock 1,000 bibs of online availability. Given that this channel will be growing only bigger and the volatility will only increase, we are taking the next leap in this technology by moving from flexible technology to adaptive manufacturing technology with our Nano 3.0 magnetic levitation-based technology.
I will give you a glimpse of that technology through a video that we'll be playing shortly. India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. With rising affluence and democratization of social media, the Indian consumer is evolving rapidly. With the rise of quick commerce and premium beauty, the volatilities are further increasing, and consumers are expecting shorter lead time. Hence, we need to move from flexible to adaptive manufacturing. Presenting Nano 3.0. This new-age technology will help us break from batch size constraint through innovative pipeless manufacturing and lineless packing. The manufacturing setup will have mobile vessels with zero pipelines, resulting in zero wastages. With different flexible mixing heads, the vessels are capable of producing any quantity of product depending on the demands. These vessels are then directly transferred to packing stations, ensuring zero wait time.
Nano 3.0 is an adaptive manufacturing setup capable of running multiple formats simultaneously. This setup combines multiple packing lines into one packing matrix in which each pack is transported through magnetic levitation technology to its next assigned station through unique non-linear paths. Nano 3.0 is a modular setup with individual stations like fillers and cappers, whose capacities can be enhanced individually, optimizing the overall capacity. The machine can be transformed based on seasonal requirements and demand spikes, resulting in improved availability. Nano 3.0 is always on, featuring zero-minute changeovers. One pack can be taken for changeover, while other packs still run undisturbed on the setup, and a ready standby station can be plugged into the matrix to start the next SKU. The Nano 3.0 will be paired with ASRS and automated end-of-the-line to enable D2C for high-end beauty products.
With Nano 3.0, we hope to revolutionize the supply chain for premium beauty and unlock further avenues of growth. So moving from manufacturing to distribution, Samadhan is our superior fulfillment capability that will help us service our distributive trade, which is our biggest channel of sale. So before we get into what did we do to enable this solution, we will get into why do we need to solve for it. So if we talk about the retailers, especially in the metros, given the context of quick commerce, the retailers also need to evolve, and they need to have the right stock available at the right time on the shelf. Given that, what they really need is anytime and more frequent ordering, next-day delivery with a higher fill rate and with a larger and more relevant assortment. So to solve for this, we established Samadhan, our centralized fulfillment center.
The first Samadhan we set up three years back in our Chennai city and has been functional for the last three years. And in the recent past, we have established Samadhan in Vapi, which is servicing the Mumbai city. So I will show you a short glimpse of how does the warehouse work. Yeah, OK, so let me just quickly introduce myself. I'm the regional customer operation lead and who also takes care of future-fit projects for customer operation. Let's start. So welcome to Samadhan, our IoT-enabled smart direct-to-store fulfillment center. This is co-located with our distribution center in Vapi, which is around 150 km away from Bombay. Now, the objective of this fulfillment center is to daily allocate, pick, pack one million units of 1,000-plus SKUs in 5,000-plus daily orders that we get.
We have built end-to-end physical, digitally, and analytically connected ecosystem for order capturing, allocation, picking, packing, sorting, and delivery. In a full cycle, the system must ensure there is an SKU in case in front of the picker. Hence, all of these stations that you can see are connected with a series of IoT-enabled conveyors, diverters, and sensors. These IoT devices are driven by an intelligent warehouse management and control system. The physical task of picking is assisted by a digitally connected ecosystem, which analyzes a huge set of data on a real-time basis. To enable this, these SKU case and customer crates have digital identity through barcodes. The system intelligently allocates customer orders to each workstation to optimize the waiting time. Now, I will take you to one of the workstations. You can see how a Good-to-Person, Sort-by-Light Technology workstation looks like.
Behind the picker, the customer crates are mapped to the station. So all the blue crates that you see are basically the customer's order crates, which will be going to the market today. And given this system ensures that there is always an SKU in front of the picker, the waiting time is minimized. The picker is scanning the barcode on the case, and the system is suggesting how many units that need to be dropped in which customer crate through light. You can clearly see the person has to spend a minimal amount of time, less than two seconds, on identifying the SKU or identifying the customer crates. And as soon as the customer crates are also completed, they are put back on the loop conveyor. And then it goes to the sort station post getting sealed. Every day, around 150-plus dynamic routes are formed for the last-mile delivery.
5,000 orders are going into 150-plus dynamic routes. What you can see now on the screen are the sorters, which are sorting those customer crates which are getting packed to the last-mile delivery routes. These routes are being allocated to the sort arms, which you can see on the screen. Also, each pallet corresponds to one of the last-mile vehicles. These crates will be diverted to that arm. Post-scanning the light, the operator will be guided in terms of where to put those crates. This again allows the person to have minimal searching time and guides it through technology. After the sorting is completed, the middle-mile vehicles that you can see on the docks are loaded, which then move to the cross dock, which is in the middle of the city.
In one middle-mile vehicle, typically, we load close to 15-plus last-mile routes, equivalent crates, and cases. We finish invoicing today's order by night, 11:00 P.M. The trucks will leave from the site by 11:00 P.M. in the night and will reach the city around 5:00 A.M., 6:00 A.M., and then the cross-dock operation will happen, so I'll now hand over to Yogesh to take the session forward, so you heard Akshay talk about the digital progress in the manufacturing, and Rajshri talked about the digital progress, what we are doing in the front end. Similarly, there are several intelligent digital use cases we implemented across four pillars of supply chain and improved the operational efficiency.
But now, with the project Samarth, we are building the Supply Chain Nerve Center, which will integrate all the digital use cases of four pillars of supply chain by integrating the data and processes of these use cases to drive end-to-end efficiency through the faster decision and the automatic execution of the recommended actions. This capability will also predict the alert in case of any disruption and will suggest the intelligent recommendation and will also execute them automatically. And this will really enable us to our vision of autonomous supply chain. We will show you the Samarth, which you will see how we are building this end-to-end capability. We have been making our supply chain future-fit over the last few years with several intelligent use cases across plan, make, source, and deliver.
We are now integrating these four pillars through Project Samarth by building an AI-enabled end-to-end supply chain nerve center capability to drive intelligent and autonomous decision-making for managing supply chain volatility. Samarth provides predictive alerts for any risks that interrupt business-as-usual activities, offers key insights to mitigate these risks, recommends intelligent solutions, and auto-write-backs to existing transaction systems for a more faster and data-driven decision-making. Imagine a scenario where a sudden breakdown occurs at one of our home care powder factories. Traditionally, this information reaches supply planners with a lag, and they have limited visibility to act upon it. The planner will have to access multiple platforms and call stakeholders to check inventory status, raw material availability, and several other data points for the impacted SKU. This leads to potential service losses and higher supply chain costs.
With Samarth, we will have end-to-end visibility on relevant data points like capacity and raw material availability in other sites. In addition, the tool will generate auto-recommendation to maximize service at minimal costs. This helps the supply planner to manage disruptions with just a few clicks. Embrace the future with Samarth to deliver a future-fit supply chain. That's all from our side. We're happy to take any questions, clarification. From a manufacturing standpoint, given that you've got distributed manufacturing, your own units and outsourced, and with the nano factories, how are you thinking about CapEx and, second, increasing the share of outsourced manufacturing? Or now, is the thought process different from what it was earlier? So you have seen this when we're really building this new capability, and Akshay talked about how we are creating value for the business.
In the last three years, we improved over the efficiencies of 400 basis points, and we are running very high efficiency. That's really helping us to unlock the volume to support the growth at the minimal CapEx. What we are doing, we are really moving the CapEx for building the new capabilities, innovations, and the productivity less in the capacity because we are getting these capabilities that are really improving the efficiencies. The next question about third-party, we are having some key strategic third-party, especially for the home care mass volume. We run with the same rigor with the efficiency in the third-party also so that we can continue to drive the efficiencies there also. Basically, these third parties are mostly from the home care category, less for the BPC and this. Understood. Great. Thank you. Yeah.
What is the contribution of third-party outsourced manufacturing to your overall sales today? What was it five years ago? So it depends on business-wise business. As I said, home care will be slightly higher, B&W will be lower, PC will be less, and even then nutrition in between. So it is not fixed for the one business. It depends on which portfolio. And normally, which is really core technology and patented for us, we really try to make in-house. And sorry, does that, if I see the trends, one is integrated, Nakshatra is all about multi-category. There are small nano factories. Does it mean that scale is no longer a significant cost-saving advantage anymore? No, no. We are the same. That is why we are creating the multi-category factory to really get the benefit of scale.
If you're the single category, we will not get the benefit of scale. So when I said the home care factory, Sumerpur was only the home care factory, and we are not fully regionalized because some of the products were coming from the other factory. When we created the multi-category factory, we really increased the scale of the factory. But the lines would be completely different, right? Line will be completely different, but we have administrative manpower. My factory director will be the same. My engineers will be the same. And that can be rotated. That can be rotated. Maybe line will be different, but the total workforce, 30%, remain the same for the site, not for the individual, the line. And given these Dark Operations, increasingly, your incremental factory requires lesser workers. Is that understanding also correct? So maybe I will not say 100% correct.
Of course, it optimizes when we're really bringing the new technology and all these things. Only, I will say these people are doing the value-added job, not running with the line. So they can do this. What will be the really how can we really improve the logic of our processes? They will be working in the technology front rather than running the day-to-day operation. And hence, more of the employees would be more in packing now as a percentage of the factory, right? So it is always there. Manufacturing will be less. Packing will be more. But even then, how we are seeing this, how can we really make the packing operation also dark? And these people should do the value-added job rather than start, stop, but then they are pushing that now. Got it. Thank you. Yeah. So actually, it's just extending from there.
Generally, it is the quality supervision and the packing line where most of the employees are kind of engaged in factory. What we are seeing is that you're talking about using AI and reducing defects. And that kind of helps reduce the cost of the manpower there. But yeah, finish the question. So I mean, my question is, if you are adding more systems, ideally, CapEx cost tends to be higher, right? I mean, how do you optimize both CapEx and manpower at the same time? Yeah. So firstly, whatever the improvement we are doing, it is not only for saving the manpower. When we start saying when we are putting the technology to really 100% make first-time right and all these things, we are really reducing the wastage. Because even then, if you are not controlling the quality, we have to clear the quality before dispatching the market.
When the quality person will check and they will not find the standard meeting the standard, they will reject. Then we have to reprocess. How we are really using the camera technology so that my rejection should be lower and we can really reduce the wastage. That is the first motive of really how can we ensure 100% quality in the market? In some cases, when the quality is doing not 100% check, there may be some chances of risk of going outside also. For that, we are really building the technology how can we really reduce the wastage and ensure that my 100% product, which is in the market, meeting the specification. That is the origin of this technology. Second thing you said, this CapEx, you are right. The CapEx will be required with this.
But the benefit is return of this CapEx is very, very high. And that's where we are doing it. And that's the reason we said we are really moving this CapEx for the capacity creation. We are reducing because this efficiency is giving the capacity. We are really using this CapEx for the productivity more. I just wanted to understand that DBNR, where you said that you've reduced it to three days or something. So DBNR, basically, days between the next run. And this is the measurement of agility, manufacturing agility. So suppose, let's take example, Lifebuoy we are making today. And the next run will not happen 10 days. Next happen will be two days. So we have reduced the cycle stock in the system. And that has really helped us to. I mean, is that done through reduction of SKUs, per se?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So then what benefit will we get from this? This has been done to really reduce the run size. So currently, suppose four years back, if you are running olive oil in one run, 110, now we will be taking changeover in the 10. And for that, we have built the capability how can we really reduce the changeover. We are doing most of the line we are running with the single-minute changeover. And that has given the benefit. If you reduce the changeover, it will not be. If you reduce the SKU, it will not give the benefit. We have reduced the really our changeover time so that we can take the frequent changeover without losing any efficiencies. And that has given the benefit of cycle stock and the freshness in the market. Thank you.
Welcome to the customer development idea of what we're planning to do in Hindustan Unilever. You've heard from Rohit. You've heard from our division presidents in terms of what we're attempting to do in each of the categories and each of the portfolios. Rohit spoke about how we're trying to build differential capabilities across growth, future growth, and market making. I'll talk to you about how we're actually visioning our route to market and our CD system in the coming years as well. Brief overview before we get started into what we are going to do, a brief recap of where we are to begin with. As CD in HUL, we actually have possibly the unparalleled distribution reach of any company in India. We go to about 9 million plus outlets. That actually reaches over 95% of value-weighted distribution outlets in the country.
Out of these, we actually reach 3 million outlets directly, which means of the 3 million outlets, we actually know what they buy, when they buy, what frequency, what quantity, what levels of portfolio that they have in these stores. We actually have distribution systems across more than 2,000-odd towns over India as well. What we do, we actually ship over 75 million units. Again, by far the largest in India. And over the last few years, our digital demand capture is now over 35%, both on traditional trade and on e-commerce systems. What has helped us actually get here is actually the fact that we've been pioneering thought leadership in CD over the decades. We actually were the first to set up a modern trade team early on over the turn of the century.
We actually were the first to set up the e-commerce team as well in about 2013, 2014. And if you go even further back, if you look at how we've reimagined our distribution setup in India, Shakti, which is a rural go-to-market system, we actually set it up at the turn of the century. Winning in Many Indias, which we envisioned in 2014, also was breaking India into 16 clusters, which then end up very differentiated levels of go-to-market strategies, portfolio strategies, mental and physical reach strategies in these clusters. Lastly, what you've also seen over the years is how we've been taking the lead on digitization. We were, again, amongst the first companies who digitized distribution and digitized sales in India early on in about 2005, 2006.
If you go and see the distributor salesmen and saleswomen who are there, the HHTs, the handheld terminals that they carried, we were the first to introduce them amongst any of the large companies. And of course, Shikhar, I'll talk a little bit about it in the coming times as well, among the first large FMCG companies to have an eB2B platform. Now, this is what we've done so far. But a quick look into what the future holds for us. Rohit alluded to it, three big themes that are emerging. First, consumers are becoming more affluent. And all of you have heard about it in various people, various division presidents talking about it. Consumers are premiumizing. Consumers have more disposable income. That's a secular trend that's traveling across the country. Second, you're also seeing digitization. Rohit spoke about you've got more than 900 million internet subscribers in this country.
What that's led to is one, a convergence of content and commerce. Second, with the amount of infrastructure development that's happening in the country, media and physical reach is now no longer a barrier. Consumers know about the products. Consumers can know about the segments, can know what's happening out there. Also, with the physical reach now becoming a fraction of the cost of what it was before, have access to these products as well. In this lens, how are we looking at what are we going to change from a CD distribution system with Hindustan Unilever? First, you're going to see the rise of organized trade. Modern trade and e-commerce will become bigger in the coming years. You are seeing consolidation of modern trade retail in this country.
E-commerce, on the other hand, with the development of technology, with various new AI tools coming in, you're seeing actually fragmentation with new models emerging in e-commerce. Second, you're starting to see the rise of specialist channels, and what do I mean by specialist channels? The way people buy beauty is very different from the way that person buys foods. It's very different from the way the person is looking for a diabetes solution, so there are three different systems that are emerging, and I'll talk to you about how the specialized channels become a particular port of call for us in the coming years as well, and lastly, when you talk about traditional trade, traditional trade is also undergoing a change. With the amount of demand that's exploding with the consumers, you're starting to see an increase of portfolio that the traditional trade carries.
And also, the fact that traditional trade is also digitizing at a rapid pace. And hence, that's what we're setting ourselves to do, is we're actually looking at how do we get channel specialization at scale in the coming years. We have geography specialization, which is now deeply embedded in this organization. The Winning in Many Indias is an approach that's more than a decade old. And it's the very fabric of how we operate. What we're now doing is layering on with channel specialization at scale. And across three big verticals, traditional trade, making sure that we transform and amplify our moat that we have already created. Second, making sure you create the customized route to markets that I'll touch upon in the coming slides. And lastly, amplify our leadership that we also have in the organized trade channels.
First, in traditional trade, reinforcing the way we operate is a Kirana-centric distributor-inclusive model. And that's the core ethos of how we are set up as Hindustan Unilever in CD. What we're looking to do over the next few years, first, if you look at the amount of stores that we reach, I told you we reached close to about 3 million odd stores. We reached to over 65% of value-weighted distribution. What it means is we reach 65% of FMCG business contributing outlets directly. That's gone up by over 900 basis points over the last four to five years. And over the coming times, we will enhance this as well. So it is not about reaching just more outlets. It is reaching right outlets. So we will reach the right outlets to ensure that we increase the quality and the quantity of reach.
Secondly, as we reach more outlets, we also will increase the frequency of coverage in the existing outlets. What it means is as a portfolio expands, as the retail shops become bigger, as consumer demand fragments, we also will ensure that we touch these retail shops with far more frequency. So we have a large number of retail shops that we already visit more than twice a week. We will continue to enhance that and increase that frequency in the coming years as well. Lastly, we will transform our distribution system through Shikhar. Shikhar is our digitization moat that we've now created, which enables the access to the retailer at any point of time, of any SKU, of any portfolio that we sell. What's the Shikhar proposition? A lot of you know about it, but just worth reiterating. The retailer has access, wide assortment.
There's transparency of pricing, so you know what you're going to get. You end up getting confirmed deliveries, which means if you place an order, you know that your stocks are going to come to you at the time that it says it is going to come to you. And also, you have assured return policy in case there are damages, in case there are challenges there. There's anytime return policies as well. Now, what the retailer also gets is while he's able to place an order better, the retailer is also able to sell out better, which means what we now have is demand generation actions at the store. So with the QR code, we have shopper couponing activation, where shoppers can go scan a QR code and actually get differential offers in those particular stores.
We also have enabled a capability where retailers can send out the offers that they have to their shoppers. So the retailers can WhatsApp them, can create a pamphlet, can send it out digitally so that the shoppers know about the offering that they have. What does it do from a HUL perspective? This actually unlocks capacity, which means we don't need to increase the visit frequency if we had to capture the same demand, which means we are able to capture additional assortment, additional sales, without having to establish the necessary infrastructure cost associated with it. Why are we able to do it? It's because we have the scale of HUL, and hence, consequently, we leverage the cost structures, ensuring that we have the lowest cost of reaching these stores. What is it at the backbone of it? And what's there? Sorry, what's there hiding behind it, right?
Sorry, yeah. And I spoke about the technology solutioning. And a lot of you would have heard of B2C companies talking about performance marketing, talking about how they're doing with consumers. What we've got is B2B performance marketing at scale. What you see here on the left is for shopper coupon activations that we've done. We actually have influencer campaigns that we've done to actually talk about the benefits that Shikhar comes to the retailers as well. You see an AI customized ad. What it allowed the retailer to do was actually to customize the kind of offers that the retailer has, superimpose the name of the particular store, and then it'll create an advert for you in less than a few seconds. And then the retailer can then send it out to their particular shoppers. Again, it helps create demand generation for them in those particular stores.
How have we been able to do it? It's a four-pronged pillar approach. We have a convergent technology stack. And that's what we call the Shikhar and the SalesEdge technology stack. What it means is when the salesman goes and when the retailer places an order on Shikhar, both of them are on a singular stack. So the salesman can see what the retailer has ordered. The retailer can see what the salesman has taken. So there's no confusion amongst what superimposing or what are those complementary SKUs that are getting ordered across these two. Second, we also have a Shikhar intelligence stack, which is essentially built upon the ordering and the behavior patterns of each of these stores. So what we've been able to do is now customize homepage layouts. We have customized banners. We have customized offerings.
So what retailer A sees on their home screen is different from what retailer B sees, different from what a retailer C sees. Third, we have a Shikhar care, which means we have a telecaller setup which actually goes and reaches out to these retailers in case there are problems. What are the challenges that you have? What are the problems that you have? How do we reach out and solve it? So you have a dedicated telecalling Shikhar care system as well. And lastly, we have a combined delivery system. What we do now is we track deliveries to ensure that the deliveries on the orders that are placed get delivered at D+1. So 100% of the Shikhar orders that are placed an order today, 90% of them get delivered tomorrow, the 100% of them get delivered two days later.
That gives the assurance of delivery to the retailer that whatever order that gets placed gets delivered to them on time. In a few places in the subsequent sessions, you'll also see supply chain where we've enabled a Samadhan ecosystem. What Samadhan does is it actually delivers directly from the warehouse that we have to the retail shops. That's now live in a couple of cities. We've now expanded from one city to about a couple of other cities now. And that is also something that we are scaling up in the coming years. What I'll do is actually play a short AV, which will hopefully bring this to life a little bit better. What began as a modest pilot in 2019, onboarding 10,000 stores, Shikhar has transformed into a powerhouse for Hindustan Unilever, now boasting 1.4 million stores.
Our platform sees over 70% monthly active users and over 150,000-plus Shakti entrepreneurs in rural India. Through the digital selling hub, Shikhar achieves 75% monthly app engagement with tailored content and precision marketing. This capability unlocks customized homepage layouts, marketing automation, and influencer marketing. Retailers benefit from anytime ordering, attractive pricing, easy credit, and hassle-free returns, resulting in a remarkable NPS score of over 80%. Shikhar maintains its competitive edge with unparalleled reach, low service costs, and the ability to drive distribution in general trade. We are dedicated to have a Kirana-centric approach by empowering retailers and enabling them to buy smarter and sell more through Shikhar. Our Sell More initiative empowers local stores to go online and increase their discoverability and sales via ONDC network.
AI-driven tools empower mom-and-pop stores to create competitive ads, with a celebrity-led AI campaign generating one video ad every 10 seconds in the first three days. Our vision is to be a leading eB2B app focused on Kirana-centric and distributor-inclusive proposition. So that's what we had on traditional trade in terms of how we are amplifying our moat through digitization. What I'll now do is talk a little bit about the customized RTMs that I spoke to you about. What we have are three different RTM models that we've envisioned. First is the beauty PRO system. If you look at the beauty purchase outside of e-commerce and modern trade, it's a very concentrated setup that exists across the top 80 or so towns, exists across the top 80K outlets.
What we've now created is we now have a dedicated route to market system that sells beauty in these 80,000 outlets now live. This is already up and running for the last few months. Initial results are quite promising, and this is something that we will scale as we go forward as well. Second, if you look at problem solutions, so when you have a certain problem, let's say you have diabetes, let's say you have bone issues, let's say you want to understand what is best for your pimples, what is best for your acne, you essentially go and look for science-based solutioning, and what we have is, again, a customized pharma ecosystem that we've set up. What we now do is enabling this. We actually go and reach out to 40,000 doctors in this country.
With the 40,000 doctors, we are able to ensure that we get the right prescriptions. Because trust me, most of these consumers actually look for scientific solutions and look for someone who recommends the product from a doctor perspective, and once the doctor prescribes, your stickiness is far higher. We also have the same setup, which ends up reaching over 200,000 of the pharmacists, and I spoke to you about the fact that we go to 65% of the total weighted distribution. We actually go to 70% of the total weighted distribution of pharmaceuticals directly. Third, Rohit and Shiva spoke about this as well. Again, if you look at foods, you have foods which are also emerging in a very different setup. How you consume foods is very different from how you consume beauty.
A large part of foods is something that you won't have on the go, that you want to consume out of home. It's not something that you'd want to buy and get back home as well. And at the same time, you also are seeing the emergence of differentiated international cuisine ranges that are coming in in very small niche specialty stores that are even more concentrated than the beauty system at this point of time. There's actually about 45,000 odd stores in the country which actually contribute to about 70% of the premium foods business, and that's where we are setting up a dedicated foods ecosystem to make sure that we capture and cater to this nuanced demand and nuanced way of selling and buying of foods in these stores.
As we look forward, we saw and we spoke about the fact that organized trade is going to become bigger, and I'll first speak about modern trade to give you a sense of where we are and where we stand. First, if you look at our overall presence in modern trade across the categories that we play in, we have the number one share in over 80% of the categories. Our competitiveness in modern trade is actually higher than our overall competitiveness, which means it gives a tailwind as modern trade continues to grow. Third, we have unparalleled execution reach, and Rohit spoke about how we actually build brands in stores, and this is actually where we have the ability to build brands in store.
If you go to the Modern Trade stores, you'll actually see people in the store who are trying to promote, who are trying to merchandise. 35% of the people that you see in the store actually work for Hindustan Unilever, merchandising the products, executing, and the proof of the concept is the fuel of the launches that we've done in the recent past. We've been able to get to over 60% weighted value distribution within three months of launch. How are we envisioning this as we go forward? First is how do we actually build the categories in the customer? We spoke about Futureco. We spoke about market making. How do we actually bring this alive in the store?, so we actually are working with customers to say, what is the right level of planning coming in the store?
What is the right amount of space that you allocate to Futureco? What is the right amount of space that you allocate to market making? Helps us actually build the categories in the store with the customer. What enables us to do it is that we are able to learn from our global capabilities. We have actually imported global tech stacks into this country, customized it, the tech stacks that help us understand the right amount of planning coming, the right amount of assortment, the right amount of profit modeling that enables us to have the conversation with the customer on what to keep, where to keep, how to keep. And also that scale, what it allows us to do is to actually deepen our partnership with the customers at a very different level.
A lot of you would have seen the kind of activations that we did during the recent event that happened in the past. But we also had the opportunity to actually host one of our big customers in our U.K. office, where we actually took them there. We showed them about our plans that are upcoming for the next few years. Ensures that both of us are in the same spirit of which are the categories that we are going to build in the future, make sure that we have mutual benefit of building the categories both for the customer and for us. Now, as we look forward, the other channel that's, of course, emerging and growing in everyone's mind is how e-commerce is going to grow.
Before I get into what we are doing in e-commerce, I think it's worth looking at what we have done in e-commerce in the past. First, e-commerce is already 7% of Unilever's HUL's business in this country. We haven't spoken about it much, but it's a sizable business. And you know a large part of our business also exists in the mass portfolio. So when you look at beauty and well-being in specific, it's already 14% of the beauty and well-being business for us. What we've been able to do is actually grown about 30% CAGR over the last three years. And some of the things that have worked for us, and Shin and Tan alluded to it, is that we have a customized portfolio that we sell. We have almost 50% of the business in e-commerce that comes from a portfolio that sells only in e-commerce.
It doesn't sell anywhere else in any of the other channels. What we've also done is automation at scale. So we have 90% of the spends that we do on e-commerce is now automated, which means click of a button, the bot automates what is the kind of bid, what is the kind of pricing, what is the kind of incremental investment that needs to go behind every single campaign. And lastly, what has enabled us to do it is that we actually have over 50% of the people working on e-commerce who are actually coming from the industry. So they've come in from digital-first companies. They've come in from external companies, worked in tech startups. Actually gives us that industry experience to actually help build those capabilities within our organization. Now, as we look forward, how are we actually approaching e-commerce?
First part is that e-commerce is not a singular entity, and we approach it through three different vectors. First, how do we work on marketplaces? Second, how do we work on beauty.coms? And third, how do we work on QuickCommerce? Each of these three actually has a differentiated approach, whether it is a kind of portfolio that you play, whether the kind of campaigns that you set up, or even the kind of portfolio that you activate is actually based on these three axes. You don't operate a singular solution for all e-commerce. It's actually customized by each of the three pods that we operate within e-commerce. What allows us to do this at scale is we've actually used AI-enabling tools here.
What we have is now AI is actually able to tell us what's the right kind of content to deploy, which tells us this is the kind of contrast that is needed. This is where your logo should be placed. This is the amount of color that should be put in. And all of it is automated. And then what we're able to do is also deploy using this automation, which means we are able to ensure that what is the kind of bid that you do on a particular campaign? How do you increase your bid, decrease your bid, which campaign to go behind? All of it is automated basis rule sets. And lastly, enhancing our partnerships with the customers that we've had in modern trade. We've also been able to create these with e-commerce partners as well.
Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh. Wait a minute, get it how you live it. Ten toes in when we standing on business. I'm a big stepper, underground methods. God knows who's got the most, not the little. Straight terror, product of your errors. Pushing culture, baby, got a product you can measure. Creme Zedder, the one who get the weather. Swerving while I'm bumping Patrick Pater. Rolling through the city with the Boost milkshake, the new secret to my energy, now available on Zepto. This allows us to amplify what we are able to create, what we want to create with our customers alongside us. So a lot of people spoke about how we are actually amplifying our digital activities, how we are amplifying our market making opportunities.
This is how it comes to fruition with how we work with our customers to actually amplify the opportunity that exists. In summary, I'll actually play a short AV on e-commerce just to bring all of our capabilities to life. Our journey consists of three key moments: availability, discoverability, and conversion. We track and enhance daily availability through specialized supply chain models. To improve the discovery of our brands, we deploy 10,000 campaigns every day across vectors of customer, geography, and optimize real-time with completely automated campaign management tools. To improve our conversion, we have created an in-house AI engine across content design, creation, and deployment, spanning the content supply chain to enhance shopper consideration. All of this powers a bespoke analytical layer, tying up data sets across internal, external, syndicated data to enable predictive analysis for a more agile decision-making.
Leveraging cutting-edge technology, in-house analytic systems, and keeping the shopper at heart of every decision, we are creating a new competitive moat for HUL. And that's what I had to share with you today in terms of how we are transforming customer development for HUL in the coming years and creating a competitive moat for us across the industry. Thank you. I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, I need someone here to help moderate, but yeah, finish. One question on Shikhar and Kirana. Yeah. One is the Kirana shop is able to send offers to the customer. How commonly is this used? Is this just more on the PPT? It is there, but not that much used in the practical. Second is, can that lead to channel conflict between one Kirana and the other Kirana, which is not offering? And you also spoke on credit.
Till now, we understood that kirana is a negative working capital. So is that changing? And who is bearing the cost for that? And the database for sending that to the customer, that is your database, or is it the kirana database who he develops himself? Sure. So I'll answer it in bits and pieces. So first is, if you look at the kind of utility of the shopper couponing that ends up happening at this juncture, I think the proof of the concept is, for example, how many videos got created with Ashit that I showed you about. And we actually had more than a million videos that got more than, sorry, more than a lakh videos that got created with Ashit and got sent out. That means that that is a capability that is being used very extensively within the kirana stores as well.
Second, if you look at the kind of offers that we are running, what we've done is now we offer differentiated consumer offers to differentiated channels based on the shoppers in that particular channel, and we spoke about differentiated YouTube markets as well, and we now have differentiated offerings that we offer to each of these stores in great amount of depth looking at the data that exists. In terms of channel conflict, why it will and why it will not lead to channel conflict, what we have, again, is a great understanding of the kind of portfolio demarcation that exists across the channels and the retail stores as well. My question was between two kirana outlets. See, you reach almost nine million outlets, which means almost every outlet you reach. So between two kirana outlets within this micro radius, my question was on that. Yeah.
We've not seen any kind of channel conflict arising because of that. Because, again, a lot of Kirana stores have very loyal consumer bases that they work with. What it actually enables them to do is actually to increase the transaction value of the consumers and the loyal bases that they have. More importantly, in some way, reduce the amount of impact that larger channels have on them and not create a conflict amongst different Kirana stores that exist at this point of time. What we have, again, in terms of working capital that you mentioned, in terms of impact that is there, all of you know there is a working capital that we have with our organized trade partners and with our traditional trade partners as well.
In terms of where it is on the books with traditional trade partners, we pass it on as a differential margin, and the cost of credit gets borne by our traditional trade partners. And that continues to exist. As I said, it's a distributor-inclusive model, which means the distributor is the one who extends the credit. And what we recompense is a cost of credit equivalent for that particular distributor as part of his margin structures. Is the database his or your database? The database for shoppers? Yeah, the database for the shoppers is with him. Again, because of data privacy, this is not something that we want to get into. Data privacy ensures that the data for the shoppers rests with him and his or her Kirana stores by themselves, and they are able to then distribute it among the shoppers. Thanks. Yeah. Hi.
First of all, a couple of clarifications on the. I just want to understand if I understood the data correctly. So there was a slide which said that your direct-weighted distribution is 65% in FY24. Does it mean that the 3 million outlets that you're reaching today contribute 65% of your GT sales or 65% of? No. So the way it usually works is you have different stores which have different throughput potential from an overall FMCG perspective. You have, giving you an example, you have one large store and one small store. What it means is that the stores that we go to directly, the 3 million stores, contribute 65% of the business out of the total 10 million universe that exists in India. So that's 65% of GT? 65% of India. 65% of total India's sales. Which includes emerging channels? Not for HUL, for FMCG. Okay.
Second is, there was a slide where you mentioned that 80,000 beauty pro stores account contribute 70% of premium beauty market. That is also excluding modern trade and e-commerce, I would assume. That's right. That's excluding modern trade and e-commerce. That is correct. One more question. You have this digital demand as 35%, which includes modern trade e-commerce. The modern trade e-commerce is anyway 27% of your overall business. Now, I'm assuming entire demand there would be digital. Actually, no. So the reason why we capture, we don't look at it in terms of just clarifications of what we report as digital demand capture is essentially all demand that we are able to cater to consumers or to retailers directly. So it includes e-commerce and our digital demand capture through Shikhar. It does not include what we sell through modern trade retailers. Okay. So I just want to understand.
You're reaching for 1.4 million outlets through Shikhar today, and it's been like five years now. What percentage of demand of those outlets is today captured by Shikhar? And what percentage is still not captured by Shikhar? And why is it that those outlets are still not moving 100% to Shikhar? What is the resistance there? Yeah. I think some of the numbers were there in Rohit's deck. I would urge you to look at that deck in terms of the absolute numbers that were there. I'll actually give you a sense of the retailer behavior. So the way the retailer behavior also entails is the retailer essentially also has a certain relationships that we want to continue to exist and establish. So we do ensure that we have a salesman visiting each of these stores, and we don't envision that changing ever in the future.
So, we will have salesmen visiting those outlets. What the retailer uses for is to make sure that they capture any top-up orders, make sure they capture any immediate demand, make sure that they capture any unforeseen demand that comes in over the universe. And consequently, that's what we are using Shikhar for, or that's what the retailers are using Shikhar for. It essentially ensures that the salesman presence is not a necessity for order capture, but we will always ensure that we have a working relationship with a human being going to these stores in the coming times. Understood. Thank you. Yeah. So just continuing with what we discussed, so you are using Shikhar more as a top-up ordering. In that sense, when you kind of look at this going forward, would you seek to expand Shikhar more into the non-direct stores that you don't have direct?
Would that not logically be the right place to expand Shikhar into? And two, when you say about digitizing the Kirana, one part is obviously the communication that you highlighted. What about the inventory level? Are you trying to kind of keep tab over there? Are you doing any efforts over there? It would be useful to understand that. Sure. Let me actually look at how we are actually dealing with that. So if you look at the Kirana store, what is his or her biggest challenges is actually inventory or space and capital. That's the biggest barrier that the Kirana store faces. What we have now done through Shikhar is actually ensure that the Kirana store can place an order at any point of time. What it means is it means that you need lesser inventory, and it means you need lesser capital.
And it means increased frequency of ordering, ensuring that you have greater rotations coming in. And that's what we are enabling through Shikhar to say that as you have demand capture happening at increased frequency, you might not need, as an organization, increased infrastructure capital cost to meet that kind of increased frequency. You can capture that digitally. And what we are doing as we go forward, there are some plans in the pipeline of how we are going to use Shikhar in the coming times. We will share that in due course of time as we keep expanding the scope of the product suite of Shikhar. We will share it. I don't want to disclose it at this point of time, but there's something that we are thinking of as we expand as well.
Just to confirm, what you said is this has helped you reduce the dealer-level inventory in terms of depth. Okay. So again, the order rating? If you could kind of just flatten it. I did not comment on dealer inventory, and I'm not commenting on retailer inventory, when I say. Yeah. Okay. So if you look at, again, I'm not a barometer of retail inventory because all said and done, retailer carries a wide assortment, not just of Hindustan Unilever. A large amount of assortment that the retailer carries is actually in staples, actually in dal, rice, unbranded goods, etc. So that's where the retail capital is present on. Yeah. So for our portfolio, if you look at the absolute amount of width that the retailer has carried, that has tremendously expanded over the last few years. This reduced width is expanded. Again, I'm not commenting on it.
I've said width is expanded. So the retailer is carrying more inventory in terms of more assortment is what the retailer is carrying at this point of time. Yeah. Just a quick question. Last question. Just a quick question on the channels of distribution. So if you look at the three channels, GT is probably the slowest growing in the country right now, and the fast-growing.
is quick commerce. But if we see our presence on quick commerce, I think on the premium segments, we are fairly lagging. So even if you see, you know, for example, the body wash, the top five body wash comps are not our products. So what are we doing to improve channel, you know, as quick commerce?
Sure, sure. So what we're committed to is to ensure that we are present wherever consumers seek our products. It could be quick commerce, it could be modern trade, it could be Kirana stores, and we are committed to being there, and what I showed you as well is the fact that e-commerce growth has been quite robust for us over the last few years. If you compare it to what some of our FMCG peers have reported, we are actually growing ahead of some of our peers on e-commerce, and we are actually gaining competitiveness there as well. What we do is to monitor competitiveness at all formats, at all channel level, ensuring that we continue to gain competitiveness in each of the channels.
I won't comment on quick commerce in particular, but the idea is we monitor and track all channel competitiveness and make sure that we win in each of our channels of choice and not just one channel of choice.
Which one is more profitable? Because normally everybody says that GTA is still the most profitable channel.
Yeah. I'm not liberated to disclose a channel profitability, but what you will know and what you will see is that the portfolio that we sell in these channels are very different. We don't sell the small, price-packed portfolio that we have, the sachets that we have. And so inherently, the mix plays to our advantage. So that's why we have, as an advantage, basically the portfolio mix that we sell is differential across the channels, and that creates an opportunity for us. But I'm not going to comment on individual channel profitability. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. And, super thanks for staying with us the entire day, listening to our presentations, listening to our strategy, and getting a good feel how we'll continue developing and creating value for all of our shareholders. And special thanks for everybody who's online. I know you have stuck through all through the day with us. And, I hope the experience was equally good, what we are trying to give to people in the room out here. So super thanks for doing. What I'll do in my section is a quick recap of what you heard so far, and then I'll talk about our value creation model, touching upon short-term, and then talking about, more importantly, how all that you saw today will translate into long-term value creation for Hindustan Unilever.
To start with, you heard from Rohit earlier. India is a country inevitable in terms of its growth trajectory. We know it's only a matter of time we'll be the third largest economy in the world. As GDP per capita goes up, FMCG industry big-time benefits from the change. Today, FMCG per capita consumption in India is roughly $50. When I compare with neighboring country, Indonesia, their GDP is twice of what India's GDP is, but FMCG consumption, as you see there, is four times larger compared to what is there in India, which means as overall GDP per capita goes up, we know that FMCG industry gets disproportionate benefit from the growth that happens of the economy. Last but not least, the third element, which you again heard at length from all the presentation, that the entire income pyramid will end up becoming a diamond.
More Aspires, More Affluent, More Affluent Plus, which means the entire agenda for driving premium growth becomes mission critical, and you heard that across all the presentations, and I will bring that to summary in later part of the presentation. As you see the India opportunity, we as Hindustan Unilever are placed very well to deliver, and we have demonstrated that in the last decade. Our turnover grew twice in the last one decade, profits three times, and our market cap four times. In the last three years alone, in the entire period of inflation-deflation, we added INR 14,500 crore delta turnover to HUL. In this decade, we gave INR 65,000 crore of dividend back to our shareholders, so it's a pretty well-run organization with a very sound financial growth model.
You also heard from us the way going forward, as Rohit called out, the distinct businesses, the divisions that we have, each of them have a different role to play, and each of them will end up creating value very differently. There'll be one thing common across all four of them. All of them will end up driving top-line and bottom-line growth. But the roles are very different for each of them. Beauty, you heard from Harman, we will be the beauty shapers in the country. And that is also the reason why we will ensure that we'll have top-level investments that will go behind beauty and well-being business at Hindustan Unilever. Coming to personal care, you saw the entire role that technology will play. We spoke at length about it, how for each of the segment, each of the brands, superior product technology will lead to superior benefits.
And that's how we want to drive the growth model for personal care. There are areas within personal care which are going to be very different going forward. For example, the conversion to body wash, which was not very successful for many years, like what we saw for laundry liquids. But now, with all work which is happening in India at this point in time with urbanization, this is a category which will start pivoting very differently going forward, and which is why we want to double down on investment. Coming to home care, our powerhouse, a large business, growing extremely well, premium, and accelerating. As Stan called out, that the job for us in that area is very simple, which is keep accelerating the premium and keep making market. That's the single biggest focus for us as far as home care is concerned.
And then last but not least, in foods and refreshment, there's a pivot that we want to do here on our strategy. We will move our portfolio sharply with an approach India for India. Whatever is relevant for Indian food palate is what will be the focus area for us to drive in the foods and refreshment business. So with that, let me then walk into and talk about how we are delivering in short term, and then talk about at length what we'll get into our long-term financial growth model. This is a slide which you saw earlier from us in terms of where we are in the market. Overall, in the last recent few quarters, urban growth has started to moderate, while rural recovery remains gradual. And remember, two-thirds market in India for FMCG comes from urban, and one-third market comes from rural.
So if I combine the two, you see a slight slowdown in overall FMCG growth in the country. When you look on the right-hand side of the chart in terms of commodities, the overall atmosphere for commodity continues to remain benign. There are two commodities which are inflating: tea and second item, which is crude palm oil. Tea, of course, gets consumed and used in our tea category, and crude palm oil, the largest place where we end up using crude palm oil is our skin cleansing business. Both these categories will end up seeing inflation because of the commodity inflation. These are the numbers from September quarter. If I quote numbers from October and November month, as we got into it, these commodities continue to remain firm, which means we'll end up taking price increases in these categories.
These are also categories which are price elastic, which means as you end up taking price up, there is always an impact on volumes that happens. If I go forward and talk about what is our outlook in short term given this conversation, one, our demand trends we expect of the industry to remain stable. Some amount of ups and downs between urban and rural, but both put together, we expect demand trends to remain stable. The pace of recovery further from here will be determined by some macroeconomic parameters. To name a few, the real rural wage growth, employment statistics in the country, and of course, very, very important, which is food inflation. These three elements of macro put together will determine the pace of recovery from here onwards.
Given the amount of change of pricing on two categories, we will end up taking price increase, which we have done. They're already in the market as we speak in this quarter. And, a trajectory from a negative low-digit, single-digit price growth. Last quarter, we had a stable, near-zero price growth. If I take the impact out of the one-off, going forward, let me say for the next few quarters, we expect low single-digit price growth if commodity trends remain where they are at this point in time. From the peak margins that we had for EBITDA, we're 160 basis points down because investment was very important in the business. We are operating at a level of 160 basis points down from the peak margin. We want to maintain this level of EBITDA margin so that the priority remains only one, which is driving competitive top-line growth.
There are a few areas I would want to focus on and dive upon next from here. I'll talk about competitive volume-led growth. I just want to give a little bit of a quick rundown there. Very important for us to keep creating and generating fuel for growth so that we're able to invest the savings that we create back in the business to keep driving the growth model, and there are a few areas I want to touch upon and talk about the way we are taking steps in our portfolio. Talking about first on market leadership, you've heard from us that in 85% of the categories that we deal in, we operate, we are market leaders, but you also see the scale at which we are leading these categories: three to four times the size of the next player in these categories.
That's the strength of the business of Hindustan Unilever. While having such leading market positions, we have further strengthened this leading market position. Last few years have seen COVID, post-COVID hyperinflation, and post-net deflation. In this period, we have improved our core market share by 200 basis points. And we held on to most of that core market share as deflation happened. And as we speak in the latest three-month period, we are further increasing our core market share. We spoke about the depth and the width of the market share. The depth of the market share is what the market share numbers are, which is the top right-hand side of the chart. But the width, width of the share is what is the percentage business winning.
We had articulated that in the deflationary period, there are a few pockets where there'll be temporary dip in our competitiveness, and our number will go below 60% business winning. And we had mentioned to you we will bring it back to 60%-ish plus by end of the year, end December quarter. We gave an update to you that in September quarter already that number came up and was better than 60%-ish. So quarter in advance, our estimate and expectation, we improved our competitiveness back, and which is why you see the translation of that into shares improving and into further positive territory on top of 200 basis points that we had in the last few years of gain. So that's the level of competitiveness. Now, this happens because we're able to generate a lot of fuel for growth.
We had a pretty substantial, almost 1,200 basis points price versus cost gap at the peak of inflation in September quarter 2022. All of that now we have narrowed down, and we've ensured that pricing and savings put together, we have bridged that gap completely, which means we are operating now above 50%-ish gross margin. While doing that, our operating cost for other expenses, including employee cost, that's an industry benchmark, which you see there on the right, bottom left of the chart. As we have got this savings generated, got our gross margins back with frugal mindset, operated best-in-class cost benchmarks, we are deploying that, entire investment back in the business. Our A&P investment was as low as 7.2%-ish at the peak of inflation in September quarter 2022. We have brought that back more than 10%-ish.
And the point that we keep maintaining, it's not only the percentage A&P turnover, which is important. What is more important? What are the attributes of that? When I talk about traditional media, share of voice ahead of share of market, that's the attribute that we look after when we decide the absolute amount of investment that we do in the business. And that is true not only for traditional media, but also for digital media. Our share of spend is ahead of share of market. While doing that over the last few years, we have continued to dial up the amount of investment that goes behind digital. And you see that today, roughly 40%-ish of our media spends are in digital media.
But it is not only A&P which is important, but all the presentations that you saw earlier, extremely critical for us to invest the money that we generate from all the savings into various levers in the P&L. To name a few product superiority, Stratos, we spoke, Rohit called it out. It's a product investment. Our formulation cost is higher compared to what it was before Stratos investment, so it's overall investment. But of course, we are still maintaining our competitive price equation in that category, but that's a product quality investment. Multiple innovations that you saw. We brought Derma brand in the marketplace called Novology. Harman spoke about it. We launched Rin Liquid. We launched Vim Flower. All these investments of product innovation happens with multiple amounts of work which happens on market research and R&D to bring this innovation in the marketplace.
The intensity of innovation is only going to go further up in the business. Investment with customers, consumers today are shopping very differently, and which is why there's a huge amount of channel disruption. In these times, our ability to partner with our customers, invest on shopfront, ensure that shoppers have amazing experience to choose and prefer our brands on the shop, ensure when they go to shop, they choose and prefer our brands. So hence, we have dialed up investments in our customers. Equally, you heard in the breakout session the work that we're doing on customer development, the work that we're doing on R&D, the work that we're doing in supply chain. We have invested behind each of these capabilities to ensure that we continue to remain three steps ahead on our competitive modes.
Then if I talk about the area of portfolio, you heard from us last year. We exited Salt and Ata, the staple business of foods. This year, we announced a quarter or two ago about Pureit, our water purifier business. We exited that. The board also considered and last week announced separation of the ice cream business through a demerger and listing the business route. These steps will ensure that businesses which don't have very strong synergies, they will end up operating separately and differently outside Hindustan Unilever, and we will get to focus and double down more on the priorities that we have to grow the business. And you heard about those priorities at length in various sessions. Being on the topic, let me talk a little bit more about ice cream, what we're doing and why we're doing. First of all, ice cream is an extremely attractive category.
It offers high growth. Penetration levels overall for ice cream is low in the country, and with all the amount of work that we spoke about, about affluent India, this category will end up seeing growth going forward as well. Industry estimates talk about that going forward; there should be a double-digit overall category growth of ice cream in India. At the same time, the lower penetration will keep offering more amount of opportunity. The business that we have for ice cream in India is pretty robust. Strong go-to-market presence in the country with the second-largest national player for ice cream. We are over-indexed for ice cream in channels of the future, and at the same time, it's a premium ice cream portfolio that we have, which has grown in strong double digits for the last many years, so it's an attractive business.
However, you will see that business, it's a very distinctive business model: cold supply chain, limited synergies across multiple verticals, which you see on the right-hand side of the chart, and so where we do have good synergies is marketing and overall talent, but sans that, the synergies are pretty limited. Business, of course, is exposed to high seasonality and also high capital intensity. There's also a trigger out here, which is a decision by Unilever globally to separate the ice cream business. The brands for ice creams and tech, we get huge leverage from Unilever to run that business in the country today, so having looked at this, management working with the independent committee of the board gave a recommendation, and the board has approved that recommendation to demerge the ice cream business and list it separately in India.
The listed demerged ice cream business will be a great business with fabulous growth potential, as I just called out, the category outlook and the strength that we have already in the brands and the portfolio that we have. This will also give shareholders an opportunity to remain invested in the ice cream growth story in India. Equally, it'll allow management to focus the new ice cream management going forward of the demerged company to focus and double down with greater agility, with greater flexibility to participate and grow the ice cream business. This business, as demerged, will be equipped with brands, innovation capability, and tech from the global ice cream business. So it'll continue leveraging the global ice cream potential and capability to run the business in the country.
And last but not least, a route of demerger will lead to a smoother transition of the business and will also ensure a good talent outcome for the business as we set this business up for success. These are all the rationale that the independent committee went through along with management, recommended to the board. The board deliberated at length the mode of separation, then came to the conclusion that this is in the best interest of shareholder with two objectives: maximize shareholder value and minimize disruption to the business, and which is why we came to this conclusion. Let me now pivot and start talking about the long-term value creation model. The way we see Rohit articulated at overall level, we want to drive double-digit EPS growth for the next decade as well. And our financial growth model has four pillars to it.
To start with, driving competitive top-line growth. This double-digit EPS growth will be driven by strong top-line growth. Our ambition for driving margin will be moderate. So modest and margin expansion is what we are making assumption as part of the double-digit growth ambition. We will continue to remain very efficient with our capital and ensure that profits that we generate will keep getting converted at 100%-ish cash conversion. And while doing that, we will keep ensuring that our capital allocation remains focused and to the money. Let me drill down on each of these elements. And first, let me talk about the growth algorithm. You heard at length from us the way we'll end up leveraging very differently portfolio segmentation going forward. Very important to understand that all segments are important and they're all unique. We have strong positions across all the three segments of the business.
But the reality is the core, and let me take an example here of sachet for hair, 1 Rupee Clinic Plus. That segment of the business is extremely well-penetrated, which means the growth that it'll offer will be very different than the bottles, which are not as well-penetrated, and for that matter, serums, which are not anywhere near penetration that we have for shampoo sachet. So think of shampoo sachet for core Clinic Plus. Think of future core as bottles for hair, and think of serums that we apply on the hair as market makers. When we segment that portfolio, we will continue maintaining our strong positions and our market share and grow in line with the market as far as core is concerned. And this part of the market will end up having lower average growth compared to overall category growth.
But when it comes to future growth, we will ensure that we grow ahead of the market. And we're putting a number there of 1.25 times ahead of the market growth. This is also the area you see from investment allocation principles. While we'll maintain our investment in core, drive unmissable brand superiority there, we will increase and step up our investment in future core. But when it comes to market makers, be it laundry liquids, be it the six bets that Harman called out, this is the area of the business we'll drive one and a half times the pace of growth. And we will significantly dial up investment. The 2,000 core portfolio that we have that Harman spoke about on these big bets, now this portfolio grows at a very strong double digits. We quoted numbers as well that this portfolio in e-commerce grows at near 50%-ish.
Now, that portfolio does not make margin equal to overall beauty and wellbeing margin, but it is absolutely fine. It makes stronger gross margin. We invest heavily in that business to ensure we keep getting scale. So that's the investment allocation principle. Now, what will that translate into? This will ensure that overall the volume growth that we'll get will be at least 100 basis points ahead of the market growth, which means our growth will be broad-based, market-beating. When in fact, the portfolio will be more tilted towards future core and market makers, it'll also be favorable on mix, both on top-line mix and on bottom-line mix. Pricing, we will ensure we'll end up doing in line with the market. 2,000 pricing networks is what we ran as inflation-deflation happened. We got 99% of them right. A couple of them got it wrong.
We learned from it, of course, and then ensured that we go and correct them in the marketplace. So our principle for pricing will be that we do pricing in line with the market. And of course, as a market leader, we lead pricing. So this is how the overall growth algorithm will be there. But more important to drive this growth, we have to continue to find sources, avenues to invest, and hence generate fuel for growth. We have a very strong reflex muscle on driving net productivity in the organization across all lines, be it supply chain cost, be it driving industry-leading ROAS from our media investment, or for that matter, buying negotiations, which we have global scale to ensure we get best deals on materials and services. Equally important for us to ensure that at any point in time, our product formulation remains extremely competitive.
In all these areas, we'll then drive and deploy tech at scale. Let me quote a few examples of that. We have Agile Innovation Hub, the way we do R&D capabilities. That means innovation at a fast scale, more insights, and a much lesser cost. We're able to do rapidly prototyping and get insights and bring products to the market. And that makes us more efficient. You heard from Yogesh in the breakout session how we are deploying at scale overall digital capabilities in driving our supply chain, making it more cost-efficient. Samarth initiative, the new Center for Supply Chain, will bring plan, source, make, deliver together, and will be far more nimble in driving. Let me quote a finance example. Every month, we have to do financial forecasting. We now do not 12-month forecast in the business. We do four less cycles.
With the four cycles of financial forecasting, which involves everybody in the business: finance, marketing, sales, supply chain, we are fully automated, and these are machine-learned AI forecasts that we generate in the business to run it, and the efficiencies are equal to human forecasts. We'll end up bringing many more efficiencies like this in the organization. This is what makes us extremely tight in terms of our cost structure so that there's a good amount of arsenal available to deploy behind the business. The second box which you see there, which is premiumization mix. For India, as we see the income, household income will move, the pyramid will move to diamond.
Very similar to what will happen with the growth algorithm I mentioned in the previous slide, will drive core at one, 1.25 will end up driving future core, and then one and a half will end up driving market makers, which will also lead to our segment of the same three segmented portfolios changing to diamond as well, and hence more premium compared to what we have today, and last but not least, as we drive our growth, the cost pool will not grow in line with the turnover growth. It'll grow lower, and hence better operating leverage in the business. When we do all these three elements put together, we will generate more fuel for growth, but the idea is to invest bulk of it in the business and then deliver modest margin expansion going forward.
Let me talk about the third lever, which is our ability to convert our profits into cash. And we will continue doing the job of being efficient out here and converting 100%-ish nearly all of the profits that we generate into cash. We have a couple of weeks of negative working capital. We will keep maintaining our focus and drive negative working capital in the business. While doing that, the area we'll double down and spend more will be capital expenditure. We today spend roughly 2%-ish of turnover on capital expenditure. That'll go more circa 3%-ish. We will spend more money on productivity CapEx, more on capacity building, and more on capability building. And all that you heard earlier from innovation, from supply chain, from capability, from CD, it will require more amount of investment in the business.
This is what we make an assumption as part of our financial growth model. Then if I talk about our capital allocation principles, the first priority will be unblinking investment behind the business to grow the business. Not only the innovation that we brought in the market will bring further new brands in the market. You heard examples of Nexxus. You heard Liquid I.V. You heard from us, Pukka. There are many more brands and information that we will end up sharing more in quarters to come as we launch them. But one thing suffice to say, the intensity of innovation will keep increasing in the business. Hence, first port of call is to invest in the business, be it capacity, be it innovation, or be it brands. Equally driving CapEx for productivity and for sustainability. That's the first port of call.
Second, we are always open to high-growth M&A. Now, whenever we look at any demand space, we first come to the conclusion, do we have a brand in the stable of Unilever like Simple, like Nexxus that we can bring to the country? If at all we don't have that, then can we create a new brand within the business? Novology is a classic example of that. We created a brand, derma-focused, we launched already in the marketplace. If at all these two things are not true, we are always open to look at bolt-on M&A as well. But there has to be a very clear criteria for bolt-on M&A, and there are three criteria. We should be having complementary capabilities, number one. Number two, it has to have fabulous strategic fit.
Number three, we should be able to acquire that asset at a value so that we can create value from that asset. Those are the three criteria for any bolt-on M&A that we have a look at. And when we do that, we'll end up doing a good job in terms of giving return back to shareholders and maintaining our high dividend payout ratio. And I quoted the statistics earlier. In the last one decade alone, INR 65,000 crore worth of dividend we've returned back to the shareholders. And this is how we will end up deploying our capital allocation to ensure that our ROCE remains above 95%-ish and keeps growing. And hence, then if I summarize our entire long-term value creation model into one slide, the four building blocks of driving double-digit EPS growth turnover led, number one.
Number two, bring modest margin expansion with a very clear pivot, drive a larger bank of savings to invest in the business, and then deliver modest margin expansion. While doing that, convert the profits that we generate into cash and ensure that we have a very healthy and very focused capital allocation model to drive growth in the business. With this, let me come to a close for all the presentations that we had lined up for the day. I do hope that you got enough amount of information to reaffirm and reconfirm your confidence in our business model that HUL as a business will keep driving value creation for all of our shareholders, and you had many opportunities to ask questions during the day, but we will take the next 30 minutes between Rohit and me to answer any further questions that you have.
All our MC colleagues are in the room, and in case there is anything further that you want to ask them, more than happy to get into any areas of Q&A now. With that, can I, Rohit, invite you back to the stage, please? Again, a big thank you to all of you here and also our colleagues online. We've had more than 200 participants. You've stayed strong, stayed durable. I hope you've gained a lot. We really enjoyed having you over the last, all this entire day. The team's put a lot of effort to make sure you can feel our business, you can see our excitement, the confidence, the commitment we have to take this business to the greatest heights. And you can touch and feel, most importantly, our products, which is what we do on a day-to-day basis.
So with that, I think we are open and over to you, Shilpa, to guide us. Thank you so much, Rohit. And maybe we open up the floor for Q&A. Why don't we start with Percy? Thanks so much, everyone, for this wonderful day of presentations. I think it was a lot of value add for us. I have three questions. I'll just put them up front. The first is on beauty. I believe the main pain point on beauty is the mass skincare range in Glow & Lovely. And I understand that probably that segment isn't doing well. The brand also isn't doing well. Maybe it's because people are premiumizing or something of that sort.
But do you have any specific initiatives to rejuvenate Glow & Lovely, or do you think that that's just how the market is evolving and you'll probably make up the growth through the other premiumization initiatives that you have? So that's question number one. Question number two is on your growth in the context of demand. So you mentioned that demand environment is likely to remain stable at a macro FMCG level. So if we assume that the macro demand environment is as it was in Q2, if it just continues and it doesn't improve from there, do you think your volume growth will improve versus what we had in Q2, or do you think that the volume growth also moves in line with the macro demand environment? And the third question is on the new brands. So very exciting that you're launching a lot of new brands in the beauty space.
However, if I look at the experience of the brands which have been launched in the last two, three years, for example, Love Beauty and Planet and Simple, the ramp-up there has been fairly slow, if I might say so. They've not really gone to significant ARRs like some of the other D2C brands in two, three years. They ramp up pretty quickly. We've seen a very slow ramp-up. So just wanted to understand, while it is exciting that new brands are coming up, but if they don't ramp up to the extent, then is there a lot of meaning in these launches? Yeah, so these are my three questions. Excellent three-pointed questions. Maybe we'll share the responses. And first of all, on goal, I request Harman to comment. And she, in fact, but I must first of all say that we are determined and committed.
Gal is a very, very important part of our core, the core that's less than half part of the business I spoke about. Keeping it contemporary and healthy, relevant, and fresh is a number one mission we have. And indeed, we have work to do on Glow and Lovely. And maybe Harman can speak to what we're doing about it and what you should soon see in the market. Yeah, so thank you for the question. And I'm going to reiterate the things which Rohit said. Your first question was role of Gal. And second, are we continuing to premiumize in the category? Gal is what has made skincare in this country. If you look at face moisturizing, it's roughly 70% penetration. Gal's annual penetration is 60%. So we are absolutely committed to contemporize the brand. I think the market, like I said, we stay very close to the consumer.
What we've understood is how brightness is consumed in the country is shifting. And we are going to transform Glow & Lovely with that learning to come up with better products, to come up with a more contemporary brand, and at the same time to build regime. Because Glow & Lovely is the bedrock of how we are selling skincare in Strivers and a part of Aspires. So we're absolutely committed to it. And you'll see that very, very soon. The second point that you said is, are we going to premiumize? It's going to be an and-and strategy. We will continue to make sure that Glow & Lovely becomes stronger. And at the same time, premiumize, like I said, the headroom to grow is very, very high.
Because with the affluent, we need to realize higher value with more premium brands, premium products, and with the Strivers and with the Aspires, how can we get more products into their hands to build regimes? So just a sub-question here on gal. Is it that it's going to be varianting or launched into new subcategories, which is going to drive growth? Or is it that the current variants or the products that you have, you will refine the formulation or the packaging or whatever and make sure that the growth comes back to that? Yeah, the first thing we are going to do is to contemporize the core, the gal multivitamin. So you will see a transformational action going there.
the same time, Glow & Lovely has to play by the codes of what is happening in the category, which means if regimes are becoming important, which means specifically in skincare, you need a face wash, you need a cream, you need a serum, you need a sunscreen. Glow & Lovely is going to have those formats. In fact, this year itself, we've launched the Glow & Lovely sunscreen. So it's going to be a combination of both. How do we elevate the core itself and then make sure we build it as a skin expert master brand in brightening? Yeah? If I may take the related question on Love Beauty and Planet, Simple, and new brands, and then ask Ritesh to come back at the macro volume and demand forecast and really where do we see that going? So we are in the long game. New brands are a very serious decision.
It's a commitment for life. Once you get it, you're in, you're on the other side of that commitment. And we work on a product-market fit basis. So we had the various brands that are going through a process of incubation. We had Acne Squad. Novology had a version before what you see in the market. And there's a notion of either we stop stuff or we pivot it or we scale it. Now we are certain that we have a serious winner, a brand has found the product-market fit by working it through the last. So Simple and Love Beauty and Planet, we are convinced, is on the right side of that change. And now we are beginning to roll it out mindfully, intentionally, because it's not as simple as just throwing it in the offline market or you've got to really build the range.
You've got to make sure it's well-marketed, there's resources and people. And Love Beauty and Planet and Simple are on that side of the scale-up side of the equation. Similarly, any new brand that we speak to, Nexxus, for instance, that we spoke to, or Liquid I.V. when it comes, those are big commitments. So we are in it for the long term. And you should see the roadmap in a little bit wider time frame than just purely what we have done. So to reinforce, we have many things going on, but not everything will be scaled. There'll be something we'll stop, something we'll pivot it, and a few will be scaled. And then we are on it for the multi-year basis. Right? And I will hand over to Ritesh and Aman. Just to add, Percy, the way we should see there are three different building blocks, as Rohit explained.
It's the entire demand opportunity be it mass segment, be it premium. It is not only about launching a new brand alone. And you saw the example, INR 2,000 crore is the amount of portfolio that we have built by expanding the current brand and by also launching new brand positions as part of that. Put together this portfolio, we have a very different business model. This is not where you end up only driving growth and end up leading double-digit EBITDA margin. They, of course, make lower margin compared to average, but they are profitable businesses of INR 2,000 crore that we've created. And it grows at a very strong double-digit. That includes Love Beauty and Planet, that includes extensions of what we've done with Pond's, what we've done with Lakmé, all put together.
So the way we want to address this market opportunity is holistically using current brands and new brands, but with a business model which is sustainable in long-term, short-term both, number one. Number two, the job doesn't stop there. You then also have to create capabilities to win in these new segments, which is why what we have done within the organization, fabulous amount of capability of media allocation. You saw one example of one brand, Sangam, in the presentation earlier. How do we get ROAS from digital? Performance marketing capability. So there's a whole amount of work which has happened to build the pipeline on which you end up running this innovation. But third, extremely important, how do you make a go-to-market structure which will address this market opportunity? For example, we have seven Nano factories now. They are next to the mother factories that we have.
So that when these portfolios start to come in e-commerce with small scale, small scale does not become a limiting factor for us to invest and grow this business. So you're able to also run a supply chain of small to ensure that you're able to encourage and drive this business very strongly forward. And hence, a lot of work happens, be it beauty pro that Harman spoke about, or for that matter, supply chain for small that happens. So it's a third hard go-to-market structure. These three elements put together ensure that we have a winning business model for driving the opportunity in the premium space. Now, let me pick up your third question, which is on demand. The chart which I presented was in the section called short-term. So I just want to reiterate. It's a short-term outlook I spoke about where the demand trends will be stable.
Where you saw that overall urban is moderating, rural is seeing this point in time gradual recovery. Recovery is gradual. Both put together, we see that in short-term, the demand signals are basically stable. Long-term overall FMCG growth is the second section we spoke about, and you heard from everybody else put together. Where FMCG industry was in the past at 3%-4% for the last one decade, one and a half decade, we do expect that given the income pyramid will move into diamond, there'll be more premium, Aspirers, Affluent, Affluent Plus. The entire business portfolio will start evolving. And which is why you saw in summary what we spoke about, the way we see growth algorithm going forward, that will be differentiated.
So in medium to long term, we do believe that overall FMCG volume growth will be accelerated compared to what we saw in the industry in the past. But in short term, given all the macros, as I mentioned, the pace of recovery will determine on three factors: macroeconomic, real rural wage growth, overall food inflation, and of course, employment levels. Ritesh, my question was slightly different. My question was supposing for whatever reason, of course, in the long term, growth is going to be great. But supposing in the next four to eight quarters, for example, if the macro construct on growth doesn't change, do you have internal drivers to accelerate the volume growth from the 3% levels that we saw, or do you think that the drivers you spoke about work only if the FMCG growth is supportive? That was my question.
So we are, and maybe you, some others have the same question on their mind as do we. Because what is it that we can control? We can control how strong our brands are, so the unmissability of all of our top equities. We can control are we committed and staying patient and consistent in market development spends because those, as you compound them if you stay consistent. We've seen that in our experience. We control how competitive we are in all channels and all segments. So we are going to control we can control in the near term and keep one eye on superiority of execution on our competitiveness across a dynamic channel and a market landscape, and two, to remain consistent on the strategy that we shared with you.
After that, there could be a quarter or two with a certain number or the other, but we must stay focused on the long-term shape of the future. Because our job as leaders of the industry, as leaders of this beautiful company, is to not react too much to noise of data or fluctuations. And we have to just do what is right for the business. Because if you look back 10 years and gone through the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, I'm sure there must have been, I don't know, I was not here, but I'm sure there were good quarters, bad quarters. There were volatile quarters. There were shocks. There were GST. There was demonetization. The COVID happened. So much stuff happened. But yet, you saw what happened with Unilever and what happened with the country.
So I think we just have to, as long-term investors in our stock and also in the country, we have to remain very consistent in the long term. And that is the job we'll keep doing, investing behind our brands and capability. I think there's no other way of dealing with near-term than being focused on the long term. Sure. Thank you very much for your detailed answers. All the best. Thank you. Next question is from Jay. And before I take a question from Jay, may I request each one of y'all to ask one question so that we can cover many people in the room? And if there's an opportunity, we'll come back to you. And also, there is an informal session planned with the management committee after this formal Q&A. Jay, over to you. Hi. Hi. Thanks.
My question is, I'm just repeating the question that I had asked in the breakout session for Vibhav. Could you walk us through the five-year journey, R&D journey of Stratos? What are the challenges that you had faced? And how long did you test this technology? And whether you think this is possible to reverse engineer or replicate for your competition? And lastly, from a business perspective, do you think is this a game changer that will help you arrest market share? Or will it help you gain market share back for these two brands? So what are your base case expectations today from this? Are you asking me? Ask Vibhav. The last part is for you, Rohit. The first part I would like. Vibhav, you have to respond to that. So the mic's on the table. The last part was about the base case, did you say?
Market share. I'll clarify, but Vibhav can go on. So I think I partly answered this question in that session just for everybody's benefit. When you think about soaps, I think there are basically three aspects that you have to keep in mind. Number one, in our supply chain, we have an amazing efficiency of running our soap lines at about 550 units a minute. And if there is anything that slows that down, if your soap bar becomes sticky, if it sticks while you're trying to stamp it, or is soft and therefore produces density issues when you're making it, it creates a major issue in terms of our efficiency. And therefore, one of the things that you need to do is any innovation that you do. It needs to be basically not affecting this aspect.
The second is that we spoke about running this in about 11 factories in India. The fact of the matter is that we have designed this to run across 25 factories across the world, which is the reason why we needed to make sure that this technology would work everywhere, and when you started to look at the kind of supply chain equipment that we had, we had to invest a significant amount of CapEx, etc., in order to sort of make this formulation, and therefore, we needed to understand line by line what are the changes that we will need to make in order to do this, and the third was the innovation itself.
Because what we were looking at was essentially taking out insoluble soap, the wasteful TFM, as we call it, and replacing it with skincare ingredients, goodies, glycerin, moisturizers, etc., all of these things, and tweaking it slightly differently for Lifebuoy in order to give us superior germ protection, and in the case of Lux, in order to give us superior beauty, so we were trying to make these tweaks, and in all of this, we tested it with about 80,000 consumers across multiple countries in the world. We designed this product to work differently for different WIMI clusters, so different fragrances, slight tweaks to the formulation, so the one that we have in North India versus what we have in South India is a slightly different formula. We tested all of these products in clinical studies, not just consumer studies. We then went to various papers and publications.
So there is a lot of publication that we have done of this stuff in peer-reviewed journals. We then went to the Skin Health Alliance, which is the world's number one body for endorsement. And prior to this, they had never endorsed a soap. So we went to them, and they asked us for tons of data that we had to give them and generate that data, after which their experts looked at it in terms of saying whether this was something that they could endorse or not. So when you look at it in terms of saying why multi-year kind of work, because there's been all of this stuff that we have done, which is really, truly a very, very differentiated technology. And in all of this, we filed approximately about 20-odd patents.
We've published, I think, in about 14-odd sort of posters, top-notch dermatologist conferences, and so on, peer-reviewed journals, and so that's the reason why. Then, of course, we had to install all the CapEx, and then we had to basically establish this factory after factory in terms of doing this, so I hope that gives you a flavor for why it takes. Is this technology number one? The combination of ingredients that we have used in this is proprietary. That's the reason why we have filed patents. But the way we look at IP is that we look at IP in terms of patents. We look at IP in terms of trade secrets of how we manufacture it, and then, of course, is the investment in our CapEx and the expertise that we have in our supply chain.
And therefore, it's a combination of all of these three things that we think this is very, very almost impossible to replicate. Your second question was. I have a mic. What second question was? Is this a game changer that will help you arrest market share, or do you expect to start gaining market share for Lifebuoy and Lux? Yeah, let me just broaden that question. Skin cleansing, which is 80% of Vipul's PC business. This is a home business. We were all born into that business. We all started working in HUL selling Lux and Lifebuoy. And we are the global leaders in skin cleansing. As you mentioned, now all our big master brands, up to liquids, also have a base technology that's not easy to copy and gives us flexibility. So Lifebuoy Lux, other local jewels on Stratos.
We've got the Pears portfolio that's got a very unique formulation and product feature, the Cast Melt. We've got the Dove range, which is in DEFI, and the whole liquids range that have also got some of that also have Stratos. So now we have a base technology or a platform across many of all our big global master brands, which is quite distinctive and allows us to create differentiation because in this market, that's quite critical. The drivers of growth in this market are number one, premiumization. Consumers are moving up to Dove and Pears. Second is conversion to liquids. So we started to see inflection over the last one or two years in the whole body wash space. And there are many new formats, etc., that are coming for more niche channels like e-commerce with foams and scrubs and so on and so forth.
We have a lot of new stuff available in the global pool. So we will be driving competitive growth in this category through innovation, through differentiation, through new news, through technology, and through market development, which is broadly the formula that has worked for us in other successful categories we have. So that's sort of a more broad answer to your question of what's the base case. We are beginning to see more competitive performance off-rate, but the market is a bit slow growing. But we expect this to be the beginning of basically a more competitive trend going in the future. But again, like I said, we're in the long game, and we're going to do the right things for this. And then the outcomes will be what they will be based on good work. Yeah, I have two quick questions. I'll keep it short. One is on pricing.
Ritesh, you mentioned that your pricing will be in line with the market. Now in FMCG, wherever you are market leader, you will drive the pricing. So it seems a bit counterintuitive. For example, in tea, there is a 25% inflation in tea. There you are substantially now bigger than the number two player. How does it work? If you could explain that. Second quick question is on the working capital. So kirana generally has been negative working capital. Could you comment on quick commerce, e-commerce, how is the working capital versus general trade? I'm not asking versus modern trade. Versus general trade, how is it? Thanks. So coming to pricing, you're right. We lead price changes. But ultimately, the job doesn't stop there. Once we have done a price change, we do then ensure what happens to competition. If competition follows, that becomes a market table.
If competition doesn't follow, and of course, then we have to recalibrate, and we give examples where we had to recalibrate, which is why I mentioned that number one, whenever inflation happens, we never price to the peak inflation. Because consumers, you have to ensure that you take in small bite chunk price increases, number one. When the prices go down is when we have to take in large bite chunks price down, but once having done the job, the reason I mentioned competitive equation will keep maintaining because if at all at any point in time, competitive price equation is not stable, it starts impacting, and you see an example we quoted across 2,000 pricing networks. We got 99% of them right, but we got 1% where competition did not follow.
And hence, then we had to recalibrate in times to come, which is the point I mentioned that we'll ensure that at any point in time, we have a strategic price index. The way we see all of our brands, and in many places, we are superior, and hence we end up charging more. But there's a strategic price index. That price index, we want to maintain competitively. Now, what was the second question? Working capital. So for a minute, ignoring organized trade and just talking, let me say quick commerce equivalent. For general trade today, there is only one element that sits in the balance sheet of the distributor, which is the overall amount of credit which gets given to a Kirana store. That credit gets extended from the balance sheet of the distributor.
Now, where we end up selling directly to e-commerce or to modern trade or to quick commerce, that, let me say, data sits on our balance sheet. That is one differentiation of the business model between GT and, let me say, organized trade, including quick commerce. Everything else, creditors, stocks, that efficiency is common across all the channels. Now, big job that we always have to do, not only for general trade but also for organized trade, at any point in time, the way we work, that has to be extremely efficient. We work on a replenishment model for general trade. It is no different.
Working very closely with our organized trade, including quick commerce, you work on a replenishment model so that at any point in time, the inventories in our warehouse, in our supply chain, in supply chain of our customers is maintained at an optimum level to ensure customer service. That efficiency work is extremely critical. If not managed well, it leads to business waste. It leads to stock kickback. It leads to inefficiency. So we work on inefficiencies very clearly by ensuring that we partner and deploy tech at scale to ensure we remain efficient, which is why one of the articulations I had that cash conversion will remain near 100%. Our working capital will remain negative is what we articulated. Thanks for the introduction. Hi, team. This is Mihir Shah from Nomura. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you for the presentation. Fantastic work.
Excited to see a ton of new launches and good work around the Future Core and Market Maker presentations. However, I wanted to get a little bit of understanding on the core. Is there a risk to core given all the focuses on Future Core and Market Maker brands and also relatively low investments in the core, which probably are in line with the industry and may give a red carpet to competition? So that's one. In continuation to that, second is on the scale. How should one think about scale? Given HUL's last scale, can it be an impediment to faster growth, higher growth versus peers who are relatively smaller in size and appear are growing faster and maybe hence gaining market share? Also, does it create any impediment or from you to take any major changes given you have scale to make any major changes?
We understand Stratos is an exception, but does it create any impediment on making any major changes, launching new products, being nimble? Yeah, I get those two questions, correct? Right. I think excellent. Thank you for asking the two because those are my favorite two points. And then Ritesh can help complement me. On the first question on if you because the whole discussion, excitement, Future Core, Market Makers, are we going to ignore the core? And if you remember, I've been saying it again and again via trading to us and the entire company that the foundational premise is a healthy and a contemporary core because core is what gives us the right to compete on the rest. That's what gives us the chassis. That's how we get to every outlet. That is what gives us scale, might, economy, and so on and so forth.
We are very, very mindful of that. We're looking at productively paranoid on market shares in that segment. Where we do have problems, those are not because we were looking somewhere else. Those problems are somewhat more long-term in nature. They are more market-specific or trend in nature where we need to react and do a better job with upgrading. For instance, we talked about the Glow & Lovely mix. Very, very mindful that that's what gives us the right to exist, the right to compete. Many brands in our core and many parts of our core are doing well. The NSG bars in laundry, the Clinic Plus brand, the Sunsilk sachets, they're all doing quite well. We do have few pockets where we have to address some of those issues.
We are very mindful on core is really our first stop, and then we build from there. But in terms of investment model, we'll be choiceful in that we don't need that much money to get the right mental reach and availability. We can still use our old models of physical reach, mental reach, optimize, optimize, and basically make sure the brand and the mix is contemporary. Although in the area of Future Core, of course, we need they have got the highest opportunity to drive upgradation. We will introduce new formats. We will offer, for instance, a sun care product at an affordable price, and that will require sampling. So that is a different kind of investment model. And then market makers are even more distinct.
So what we're now doing is that we have specific playbooks that are appropriate for different parts of our franchise so that we don't do one size fits all. The part on core we know very well. That is our DNA. That is what we do all the time. So that's just to reinforce and reconfirm, reassure that that's stop number one. To the second point, focus on scale. Yes, the bigger you get, the more complex you get, the slower you might get, you might lose agility. All of this is really it has happened to other large companies. And therefore, that risk is something we need to be aware and conscious of, cognizant of, and I am that as we want to go from 60,000 to the next 60,000, this business will have to operate differently.
And the first thing we have done there is to take away all of the portfolios that didn't fit our four big divisions, then to look at the four divisions as almost independent operating units or companies within the HUL platform. So that's where you saw the character, the nature, the leadership, the focus of all of this is quite different. A home care business runs on efficiency, on upgradation, on extremely high design to value. A beauty business runs on new channels, on being on the top of trend, on formulation, on science, a very different cultural and competitive set. So we are consciously creating these four different verticals in our company, but yet leveraging when it comes to the best-in-class finance team and the supply chain multi-format factory where we can actually get the distance to the demand reduced for all of our categories.
So we are making choices of focus and scale quite intentionally, and we are going to continue working through how do we create more agility. For instance, the dedicated route to market. We are now very much conscious that we will create and have created for beauty a separate pipe because it doesn't fit very well with the mass business that we might have. For food, we already have a few pipes that are unique, like hot tea shops and food solutions. We are going to build one for food speciality, as we mentioned before. So we are also very, very clear that we will start to divide the complexity when it goes to the market. So it's an intentional process of creating a scale and agile company, an elephant that can dance, and create that kind of atomization.
You might have seen some of our category heads presenting their own categories. Within even beauty, Harman has head of hair business and the head of skincare business. They're running their own little units under that. So we are breaking the complexity down and doing it in a way only we can as HUL and yet giving us the best of our focus and scale. And that is indeed really our objective function. A little bit of long answer, but this is really very, very important for us to remain agile and speedy. Hello. Hello. Yeah, this is Shirish Pardeshi. Just one broad question. You mentioned that the macro challenges are going to remain here.
So, Rohit, in your framework, the core and the market development for brand segments, if I may ask, if the situation remains like this for over the next two to three years, you're making significant investment, looks like, in the beauty and well-being. Do you think beauty and well-being, if I look at next two to three years, will you tell us that gives you confidence that it will grow double digit at least next two to three years? So I don't want to guide and who's. I mean, you can see that far as two to three years. I can see 10 years, but I cannot see three quarters. But I can see 10 years. I know what's going to happen because it happened in the long to medium term. But insofar as growth is concerned, we have many pockets of growth in any market condition.
Our channels and segments are already. We have parts of our business that are growing quite fast. Beauty and well-being also has a volume-led growth. If you look at parts of a business like the 2,000 crore company that she has within her own division of new products and market entry, the six big bets that she's already launched are already growing at high double digits and growing very high. So I think we have to disaggregate this question and go where growth is and optimize for the near term. I mean, if you can help me with any additional comments. Exactly. Just one follow-up here. On the beauty and well-being, I did see that Harman presenting that beauty regime changes, which is happening.
And if I say that at the bottom of the pyramid, if it is a half regime and at the top end, maybe six or seven regime, in that context, what is, I mean, I would assume that at the bottom of the pyramid, HUL product will be definitely there. But if I look at the seven regime, how many products from our stable is appearing today and what is the plan to take it? Harman, can you take that question? Yeah, so we believe that the regime change at the bottom and the top is going to happen in both places. So one is going to go to two and three at the bottom. And at the top, it's already around five or six.
Already in our brands, if you look at in skincare, you have on a brand like Lakmé a five-product regime already in the market and it's present, so if you start whether it's the face wash or the moisturizer or the serum, the sunscreen, the night cream, everything is already launched in the market. Similarly, if I was to give you an example on Glow & Lovely, which is right at the bottom for the strivers, you have the cream and the sunscreen and the face wash already in the market, so you will see across our brands and across our portfolio, the stepification of the regime being launched on the brands, and this is not just restricted to skin.
If you look at haircare, even in haircare, you have the shampoos, you have conditioners, serums, masks, whether you see on TRESemmé in the market, Dove in the market, Sunsilk, the serum is in the market. And that's playing to the portfolio strength that we spoke about. Each brand will cater to its cohort with the playbook, which is relevant. And we have since the launch, we are gaining share on all these regimes over the months that we have been now in the market. And we have ambition to make sure that we scale up even faster than that. Thank you. Hi, this is Avi here from Macquarie over here. Thanks for this presentation and for the entire day. I just wanted to double-click on the long-term equation of growth that you've shared with us.
In that, in particular, you've highlighted that core will grow broadly in line with industry. In that sense, I mean, would it be fair or I would love to understand if the beauty and food and F&R, where our premium seeding is relatively lower right now, they will take time to contribute to the volume plus 100 basis points volume growth that we are targeting. Is that the right way to look at this? Or how do you would love to understand how do you see these segments contributing to growth? From the first item, you may add to it. So I think very good question. We called out that all three are relevant, all three are important, and we focus on all three elements: be it core, be it future core, be it market maker. Of course, the way we'll allocate resources will be very different.
I do expect that the level of competition will be much higher for future core and market maker, which is why you saw doubling down in terms of investments, which will happen there. But ultimately, growth will come from all three places for us, and hence, investment, market making, innovation is relevant for all three elements, so that is nowhere a compromise on any part of the portfolio. When you add all these three things up, will we grow ahead of the market? The point that we mentioned earlier, the chart which Rohit had, that where do we have overall. If I see last three years, we've added 300 basis points more premium portfolio compared to what we had three years ago. That change of making portfolio more premium will only get accelerated. Now, where will that get accelerated?
Remember one of the charts Harman presented, 900 basis points is a shift of portfolio will end up doing in beauty and well-being alone. Hence, going forward, what you will see that this acceleration led from beauty and well-being will further improve. Today, the chart with Rohit had mentioned that we are a little under-indexed on premium portfolio. Overall, we have fair share for beauty and well-being, but we are over-indexed on mass and popular, but a little under-indexed on premium. That will be more than compensated with the shift that we'll end up doing for portfolio. Hence, all put together, we do expect going forward that our premium portfolio growth, 300 basis points last three year, will only get accelerated year on year going forward. Let me rephrase. By when do you expect that to happen? As we speak, that change, just the equation won't match it.
That's where I was coming from. Yeah. So as we speak, the change is already in the market. The kind of exploration that we had, the six beauty bets we spoke, 2,000 crore portfolio, it's already got created. That's already growing at strong double-digit. As I mentioned a couple of quarters ago, 50% growth of that portfolio in e-commerce. So the change is already there in making, and the portfolio is already there in the marketplace. But the point we were making was further acceleration of the change. Will that something work? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, good evening. This is Han. Yeah. Apologies if it's a direct question, but I know Ritesh, you have covered it. But on the ice cream business side again, I mean, if I look at the last two decades, Unilever globally exited ice cream, kept it in India. Unilever globally exited tea, kept in India.
This time around, I have seen Ritesh's own presentation, which talks about, let's say, double-digit growth, the fact that it's very good from a channel perspective. I still don't get the rationale, and at least a section of investors believe that it was more of a Unilever decision, which came down to from which was kind of accepted by India. If that is the case, how do you balance? For the longest time, you balanced Hindustan as well as Unilever, both sides of the equation. Can you just give your thoughts on this? Yeah. I think first, I want to correct Vivek. We have not exited oral care globally. So we do operate oral care business in multiple parts of the world, and we have a fabulous brand in India to do so.
We have a great business of oral care globally, and we have, of course, a business in India as well. So there's no change on oral care as Unilever or for that matter in India. I just want to correct that. Second, you're right when we had to look at tea. When Unilever decided to overall not participate in the tea market, our board did very intense engagement at that point in time and came to a conclusion where we are in India, there's a fabulous growth opportunities. First of all, the business is profitable. Second, Shiva spoke about there's further job to be done in terms of upgrading from loose tea to premium tea. We are market leaders in that space. And hence, it's a very strong business, which we believe will continue creating value going forward. And hence, board came to a conclusion that we will remain.
We own the tea brand trademarks in the country. We'll continue to remain with those tea brands, and we'll continue having the tea business. So it was a decision which was very tailor-made for what was the right thing to do for tea. Similarly, when we had a conversation about lifestyle nutrition, we took a decision that for India, it makes sense to acquire Horlicks. So that decision was done. Now, just because in two cases we decided to acquire something, in one case we decided to separate, it doesn't mean the decision was not the right decision this time. But we articulated why we came to that conclusion. The moment Unilever has decided to separate the business, we have to be very mindful for a shareholder, how does a shareholder continue to create value? That cannot come at risk at any point in time.
If the brands are globally owned, they will get separated, which means going forward, we will not have the brands, we will not have the tech. And hence, for shareholders of Hindustan Unilever, they should have the option of continuing to create value, which is why then we decided they will de-merge with a certain fair value through the market listing process. But the brands will be there. This business will be part of the global ice cream business. We'll continue having support on tech. We will ensure, as management of Hindustan Unilever and board, we'll set up this business for success with talent, the go-to-market model it already has.
It makes low profitability at this point in time, but it'll be a path going forward for shareholders to create value, which is why we came to a conclusion that given the categories absolutely making sense going forward, low penetration levels, we are over-indexed on channels of the future, but overall, synergies with Hindustan Unilever is very limited. You saw the chart. We spoke about marketing and talent. Other two places we have synergy, not other locations, which is why the management with the independent committee of the board came to a conclusion. We presented that to the board, and the board came to a conclusion that that's the right way forward where we can maximize shareholder value and we can minimize business disruption, so it's just that a different decision after the process.
If I may try and remove any ambiguity or any seed of doubt that you may have had on Unilever and Hindustan Unilever. It's a very symbiotic, fully integrated relationship. India is the number one market for all of the business groups globally. We're the second largest market. The growth opportunity is the highest, and we've never had such an emphatic prioritization of India than what has been done last week by Unilever globally. We've never said double down on India. We emerged as a big business and became important, but because we have that unique mix of global local, and Unilever respects that, but we've never had this level of emphatic commitment to India than we've had before in the last week.
Second, you saw that the openness of calling HUL foods, even in the global strategy and the food strategy, as a separate priority because recognition that food is very local. Therefore, the tea business and the GSK business that we got and many other things that we are going to do, many brands we already have, is recognition what's good for India is good for HUL. So I can be very clear that we have a high level of support and commitment from the global parent to do what's right for India. What they want from us is growth. That's our one mission brief, one line brief. And how we get there is by leveraging. In fact, if there was a time to get the best of Unilever, this is now. The company develops its technology, there's brands that are of relevance to India.
This is the time that we need the best of Unilever now to come to bear with the best of HUL and the mix of global and local. So I feel very comfortable in where we are in terms of our sweet spot in this symbiosis. Thank you. Shilpa, can I ask one more quickly? Because Rohit just, Vivek, you're going to have enough time to interact with the management. I'll have a cup of tea if you give me time. I'll do that. But we just take two questions now. Trust me, we love the enthusiasm and the passion and the engagement in the Q&A section, but. And it's only Friday evening. It's just Friday evening. So we'll just move the session down to the first floor where we'll have a cup of coffee or tea, whatever you prefer, and continue the Q&A there.
But in this room, can we just take two questions which are there with both of you? Yeah. Hi, good evening. I had a question regarding acquisition and divestments from a longer-term perspective. On the acquisition side over the last six, seven years, really the reason for acquisition has been adding a new category or a subcategory. There hasn't been, so your history of the last seven, eight acquisitions all are in that direction. In the longer-term growth model, is acquisition required for adding a new category and subcategory? Is that the thought process? Because that's what the history has been. Also, from a divestment perspective, where do we see brands like Wheel, Breeze, Hamam, Pepsodent feature in the longer-term growth model? These are brands which haven't done as well. They're part of the core, probably at the lower end of that sub 50% core.
Is there a case that we kind of keep relooking at the portfolio in the longer-term model because we've shown an intent of divestment as well over the last two, three years, or do we believe we are probably at the end of the journey in that? So the question on acquisition and divestment. May I just respond to the second first and hand over the acquisitions to Ritesh? There's no doubt. Of course, we'll always look at portfolio and its evolution. But Wheel is a huge and very, very important part of our full portfolio play, Clinic Plus. Pepsodent, we are recommitted to it, and we are now extending it now to the north and taking it from Tamil Nadu and Andhra, where it is currently doing quite well.
We intend to stay in the game on that too. So I just want to remove any questions and saying, of course, we'll keep looking at it. But the two brands you mentioned, we're in love with them. See, just adding to what Rohit mentioned, we have a huge scale advantage when you operate across all price segments. The point Harman also mentioned, let me reiterate. The beauty opportunity is not only for affluent and super affluent. If we just do that job, we will not capture the beauty market appropriately in the country. We have to do the job of creating a portfolio for affluent and super affluent. But at the same time, respond to the needs of beauty for aspirers in the country. At the same time, have a portfolio available for strivers in the country.
Beauty at one point in time was basically Glow & Lovely moisturizing cream and talcum powder. That is changing. Social media today is not only restricted to cities. It goes across length and breadth of the country. So that ability of Hindustan Unilever to operate at all price points, have a complete portfolio, every opportunity, including beauty, deliver at all segments, that is mission critical to ensure it remains entrenched. Now, of course, as Rohit mentioned, we always have a look. And especially the three places which we divested: Salt and Ata, Pureit, and for that matter, ice cream demerger. In these three places, very different business model compared to all the portfolio that we end up running, which was a primary reason of deciding what we decided there. Tea, it was not the case fully complementary to the business. And hence, the decision was to retain the business.
So it's always the case, do we have synergies, complementary portfolio, and hence conversation happens. Now, coming to M&A, I mentioned earlier that at any point in time, for any new demand space which is emerging, we always look at all three options. Can we get a brand from Unilever? Hydration, Liquid I.V., tick from Unilever. Can we create an own brand if at all we don't have globally? Derma, India, Novology solution. But in case where we don't have, so premium hair oil, hair growth, we didn't have. So Indulekha was a classic. Lifestyle nutrition, we don't have. And hence, Horlicks was a classic conversation. So we will continue to look at bolt-on opportunities in all the demand spaces which we will keep entering into going forward as well. Oziva, a fabulous acquisition. It's already grown handsomely well since we acquired.
The portfolio has got further expanded compared to when we had taken the brand. The brand is far more sharper in the last couple of years of working together with amazing founders which are working. So we'll look at all kinds of partnerships to grow as well the business. But health and wellbeing was chosen as a strategic secular trend. We built the business in the U.S. mainly. That seemed to succeed and is quite sizable now. We want to now go to our big markets, India being an important one. We started building a portfolio of local and global brands to serve the demand space in wellbeing because that's definitely going to be a secular trend in the next decade. We have Oziva, Liquid I.V. we mentioned.
We may have a brand or two more to really build a portfolio to operate in a new category that we've chosen to play globally as well. And where we have this point in time focus are two areas, beauty followed by foods. Are there two areas we'll look at M&A going forward as well on bolt-on opportunities? One last question, right? Yeah. Last question over here. And then, of course, we'll continue having conversation over tea after that, tea or coffee after this. Yeah, we do both here. Yeah. All right. Aditya from CLSA. Thanks again for a great day. Question on returns.
Now, in the context of higher CapEx, potentially M&A, a shift maybe I'm sensing at least for the core, which was sort of where you said the product, sorry, distribution was a key moat now to moving to unmissable superiority maybe for sort of the newer products. Does this lead to, or how do you maintain the high ROI, especially in the context of maybe even adding additional goodwill or whatever when you make these acquisitions? So you talked about 95% ROC. So how does one maintain this when potentially margins come under more pressure? So both, if you look at ROC or ROE, doesn't matter which one you're looking at, we will continue improving both of them. I do expect 100 to 200 basis points improvement every year going forward.
The flywheel will work in terms of, as I mentioned, that this entire growth story is driven by turnover with modest margin expansion. So once we do that and get a double-digit EPS growth, which is what our stated intention is and ambition is for the next decade, this will work. Now, we'll continue to remain very, very nimble as far as working capital is concerned. We will have to, of course, increase from 2% to 3%, but capital conversion, as I mentioned, profit to cash conversion will be near 100%. So if you add all this put together, be it ROC or ROE, doesn't matter which KPI, you should continue to see 100 to 200 basis points improvement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. We now conclude the Q&A session, which was the last session for today.
Thank you, everyone, for attending the sessions and the quality of engagement, especially for Q&A. On behalf of the management committee and the entire team of HUL, it was an absolute pleasure to host all of y'all today. We would request all of y'all to join us for a cup of tea or coffee, as you may prefer, on the first floor lounge room. We'll have our management committee team members over there. Any questions which could not get answered in this room, please feel free to reach out to the management committee members and get those answers discussed with them. But before we say goodbye, I would also want to thank our partner, Showbiz, who helped us put this wonderful event together for all of y'all. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. And Shilpa, you and your team as well. Thank you so much.