Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure in welcoming you to the HUL Capital Markets Day 2022. My name is Ravishankar. I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Finance Controller at HUL. We are very excited to do this in a physical format after a gap of three years and to host all of you in our office. But keeping with times, we also have a virtual webcast, which will run in parallel, where we have virtual participants joining us. We have a rich agenda planned for the day. But before we proceed, let me call your attention to the safety AV. Could we have the AV, 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 and stand in queue for further instructions from the emergency response team. Once the all-clear is received from the emergency response team, the proceedings will resume. Thank you.
Now, let me take a few minutes walking you through the agenda and also introducing the actual team who you will meet through the course of the day. We will start the day with an update from Sanjiv, who is going to set the scene and update on our strategy and the performance. Sanjiv needs no introduction to all of you, but nonetheless, let me cover a few words on him. Sanjiv is the CEO and Managing Director of HUL. He has been leading the business since 2013. During this period, HUL's market cap has seen an expansion from $17 billion to over $70 billion. Sanjiv is also a member of the Unilever Executive Board responsible for the South Asia business of Unilever. Sanjiv has also been recently appointed as the non-executive chair of Unilever Indonesia.
Sanjiv has been with Unilever for over three decades, and for the last 20 years, he has led very successful businesses across the world, including Bangladesh, the Philippines, North Africa, the Middle East, and now South Asia. Sanjiv is also the president of FICCI and an independent director on the board of Air India. We will then move to the divisional presentations. We will begin with Beauty and Personal Care. Madhusudhan Rao is Executive Director for BPC, and Harman Dhillon, Head of Skincare Business, will be the speakers for this session. Madhu has been with Unilever for over 30 years, with a very successful track record in India and globally in various senior operational and strategic roles across different categories. Madhu blends deep expertise in category development with an exceptional rigor for execution. Prior to his current role, Madhu led the global home and hygiene category for Unilever.
Earlier, he was Vice President, Marketing for the North Africa and Middle East business. Harman is the Vice President for Skincare, Color Cosmetics, and Dove Master Brand. Prior to her current role, she led HUL's haircare business very successfully and was instrumental in the business, achieving record-high market shares. She has had a successful track record of launching and growing large brands in the Beauty and Personal Care space, with experience spanning South Asia, North America, and Europe geographies, and across categories like haircare, personal wash, and skincare. We will then move to the Home Care presentation by Deepak and Mohit. Deepak Subramanian is our Executive Director for Home Care. After starting as a management trainee with HUL in 1995, he has had a global career with Unilever, working in various sales and marketing jobs and recently at board-level general management roles.
Prior to his current role, Deepak was the Divisional Vice President Home Care for Southeast Asia and the General Manager for Home Care Business Unit in the Philippines. Most recently, he was also the Global Head of the Fabric Enhancers category. Mohit is our Vice President for Fabric Cleaning. He's been with HUL since 2004 and has done roles across sales and marketing in a wide spectrum of locations. In the prior role, he was a General Manager for Central Branch based out of Lucknow, where he led a cross-functional team that delivered sales and execution across five states of UP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, MP, and Rajasthan. We'll close the divisional presentations with Foods and Refreshment. Srinandan Sundaram, our Executive Director for F&R, will lead this presentation.
Srinandan, or Tan, as he likes to be called, has over 25 years of experience spanning customer development and marketing across a range of categories, including hair and skincare. Prior to his role, he was the Executive Director of Customer Development for us. Tan successfully transformed the HUL sales function to a very tech-enabled execution arm, leveraging the three independent ecosystems of demand capture, demand generation, and demand fulfillment. Tan will be joined by Krishnan Sundaram, our Executive Vice President for Functional Nutrition. Krish has over 22 years of experience with HUL and has successfully led large categories in the past, including beverages and premium laundry. Krish has also worked in global roles as Head of Marketing Transformation and Capability, with responsibility for business and portfolio transformation. He has led the integration efforts from the time of announcement of the GSK merger and post the integration, has been running the Functional Nutrition business for us. Before we break for lunch, we will have a quick introduction of our exciting digital transformation journey reimagined at HUL. This will be led by Arun Neelakantan, our Vice President for Digital Transformation and Growth. Arun has an experience of over 20 years and has been with Unilever since 2006. Prior to the current role, Arun led our largest business in South India and has been instrumental in transforming the business to a technology-led and people-anchored unit. After lunch, we will proceed to the breakout sessions on Reimagine HUL. There are four breakouts, one each for customer, consumer, operation ecosystem, and one for data, tech, and analytics.
Given the format, this will be only for the physical participants joining us in this office. Instructions on the breakout sessions will be shared later. Let me now take you through who you will meet at the breakout sessions. So the consumer ecosystem will be led by Vibhav and Harman, who you have met already. Vibhav is our Executive Director for R&D. Vibhav joined Unilever in 1997 as a research scientist and worked across various roles, including the launch of Pureit. In his current role, he is responsible for leading the R&D centers that we have in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Gurgaon. Vibhav also leads the global R&D strategy and mix development for iconic skin cleansing brands such as Dove, Lux, Lifebuoy, Pears, and many others.
A microbiologist and a molecular biologist with gold medals in BSc and MSc from the University of Mumbai, Vibhav also holds a PhD from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Kedar and Vipul will lead the session on customer ecosystem. Kedar Lele is a business leader with over two decades of experience covering general management, sales, marketing in FMCG internet companies, and advertising. Prior to his appointment as HUL's Executive Director for Sales and Customer Development, Kedar led Unilever Bangladesh Limited as its Chairman and Managing Director, where he was instrumental in delivering consistent, competitive, profitable, and responsible growth while making a difference to the country and the communities. Vipul is our Vice President for Modern Trade and E-commerce. He has been with Unilever since 2003 and has done many roles across sales and marketing.
Most recently, he headed our very successful fabric care category and was instrumental in driving the growth of the business through market development and premiumization. At the operation session, you will meet Yogesh Mishra and Akhilesh Yadav. Yogesh was recently appointed as our Executive Director for Supply Chain. Yogesh has wide experience of over three decades across various areas of supply chain. Prior to his current role, Yogesh was a Vice President Supply Chain for Beauty and Personal Care business in South Asia. He has been instrumental in driving the VMI agenda through debottlenecking, efficiency improvement, and network optimization. Akhilesh Yadav is a supply chain expert with close to 20 years of experience both in India and globally with Unilever. In his current role, he leads digital supply chain transformation for end-to-end value chain and manufacturing excellence.
The last breakout group is of data and analytics, which is really at the center of our Reimagine HUL transformation. Our Chief Digital Officer, Meenakshi Burra, and our Head of Performance Management, Isha Dalal, will be leading this session. Meenakshi, besides being our Chief Data Officer, is also the Vice President Unilever Operations for South Asia and responsible for IT, data, analytics, and business services. She's been with Unilever since 2001 and in the last 10 years has led several global data and digital transformation initiatives in Unilever. Isha is the General Manager for Performance Management and F&A. A recent addition to our team, Isha has over 15 years of experience in financial services. She's been a consumer and customer tech investor and investment banker focused on media and consumer sectors, and even a journalist with CNBC- TV 18 in her initial career journey.
The final session for the day is with our CFO, Ritesh. Again, Ritesh is one who doesn't need an introduction to this group of people, but let me still do it. Ritesh, as you all know, is a global finance leader with over 23 years of experience in leading diverse teams across the U.K., India, and other Asian markets. Prior to his current role, Ritesh was a Vice President Finance for Global Performance Management and the CFO for Unilever International. Ritesh is also an active member on various industry bodies, including Chair of the CFO Council of FICCI, Senior Vice President of Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Independent Director on the Board of ONDC, and a member of the CII National Committee for CFOs. So that's the team that you're going to meet today. A couple of other administration points.
We will not have Q&A time at the end of the speaker sessions, but questions can be logged online during. There is a web link. The web link is out here. It is also on a QR code on the agenda, which is all with you. You can log in at any point in time. At 4:00 P.M., we have a dedicated Q&A session where we will pick up all the questions, and we will also pick up questions from the room if there are any fresh that you would like to ask. To conclude, I would also like to draw the attention of our virtual participants to the email address on the screen. In case you need any technical support at any point in time, please use this ID, and we'll ensure that it's addressed quickly.
With this and without any further ado, I would like to call Sanjiv to start his session.
Hi, morning, everyone. Absolute pleasure to meet you all. And you know, nothing like a physical meet. We've had a couple of virtual sessions, but the fun, the excitement of a physical meet, there's nothing to beat that. All right. So let me first talk about, you know, it's very often we get into looking at what's the near term, what's the quarter that's gone by. Sometimes it's very good to pause and reflect on the decade that's what's gone. We have INR 50,000 crore. That was an important milestone that we crossed last year. EBITDA, before the inflation hike came in, we had touched about 25%. Our market cap has been in the vicinity of INR 6 lakh crore. Nine out of 10 households use one or more of our products. We reached through nine million outlets, and we have 21,000 very motivated and excited employees.
Now, we have a great portfolio. We have a portfolio which is nearly 50+ brands which are purposeful, and we are market leaders in greater than 85% of our turnover. The thing which we don't often talk about, but we have the largest FMCG R&D center by a distance in India with over 700 scientists, out of which there are over 100 PhDs working in our three centers. And we have over 20,000 patents globally. And you will get to engage with our R&D Director, Vibhav Sanzgiri. He's one of the finest scientists you could ever come across. Our distribution and supply chain, it is one of the most complicated, but I would believe it's a significant competitive edge. To give you a perspective, we manufacture and sell 60 billion units every year. 60 billion units equate to we're talking about 40 units per living Indian.
That's the scale of our supply chain. Our talent, we are so proud that we are the employer of choice across sectors. We are able to employ, attract the best possible talent. And as far as the gender quotient is concerned, we have reached 44%. And in the next couple of years, we will be gender balanced. If I were to put my management team in this room, the number of women would be significantly more than what I see in the room today. Yeah. And as far as sustainability is concerned, that's core to how we run the business. We are talking about plastic neutral. We have picked up as much plastic from the streets of the country, not just in one pocket, but across the streets of the country in 29 states, which is more than the plastic that we use in our finished goods.
When it comes to water, recognizing that water, India has to do a far bigger job in terms of managing both our surface water and groundwater resources. We have, in the last 10 years, created a water potential of 1.9 trillion liters, working in thousands of villages on both the demand side and supply side. And of course, we'll be talking to you how our carbon intensity has come down in our business. And not surprisingly, our ratings keep going up. Now, it's an amazing portfolio. This is a portfolio which would be the envy of all. Great brands, timeless brands, many new brands have come in which are catering to the new age consumers. And there will be very few companies which can state that we have been market leaders for the nine decades that we have been in operation in the country.
And you would see that over the next one year how we are creating a portfolio and capabilities which will ensure that we remain leaders for the next nine decades and beyond. We have 16 brands which are more than INR 1,000 crores, and we have got five digital first brands, exclusive digital first brands. Now, this is the market leading position. Yeah. Whether it is fabric wash or skin cleansing or skin care or hair, or whether it is HFD or dishwash or ketchup and soups, we are the number one players. It's a very powerful portfolio. And our relative market share in many categories would be the highest you would see for any large country, for any leader anywhere. That's the strength of our business here.
There are a couple of categories where we are serious number two, and we intend to become an even more serious player where we are number two. Now, market development. We have been talking with you about market development. Market development is the science and art of creating new categories. It is about getting into new segments. It is about seeding and developing. And we have made it into an absolutely perfect science and art. We know what to do. We know how to do, and we know how to scale up the model. And the impact of market development I'll share with you in a while. But let me tell you a simple statistic that every year we reach about 100 million households. Huge efforts go in, huge investments go into building the categories of the future. And that's a core strength.
If we as market leaders don't do it, who else will do it? So it's a responsibility that we have accepted willingly and happily. Purposeful brands. It's so important for us. Over the years, you would have seen from Lakmé Fashion Week or to Swad Apnepan Ka on Brooke Bond or Dirt is Good and its manifestations of Surf Excel or Meri Beti Strong. Now, these are multi-year engagement platforms built on the purpose of the brands. And we firmly believe that purpose, that's core to how we build our business, is critical to making a brand timeless. Now, who would have thought that in the last 10 years, we have created through market development a business of INR 10,000 crores? These segments didn't exist 10 years back. These are not segments that we have created through M&A. These are segments that we have created through market development.
INR 10,000 crore, as a perspective, would be bigger than many large FMCG companies in the country. That's how we have reshaped the portfolio for the future. Many times you would be wondering, how is it that a company like HUL has been able to improve its operating margin by 1,000 basis points in 10 years? One of the primary reasons is the portfolio shift that we did. The portfolio shift that we did was organic and not all. We have, of course, had some great acquisitions like Horlicks and all, but this is all created organically. That's the power of market development. Perfect stores, whether it is offline or online, whenever a shopper wants to buy our products, we want to create an environment where our differentiated products would be appealing to the shopper. That's what our focus has been over the years.
Now, this is the portfolio transformation. Again, another reason for our margin expansion. Yeah. 10 years back, the premium part of our portfolio, premium is something which is indexed 120 and above to the average of the market, was just about 22%. And just think of it. A decade later, 33% of our portfolio is now premium. Again, it has been done organically. So what we are trying to show to you today, the strategy that we have been articulating on market development and premiumization, how it has borne fruit for HUL. And this is a strategy that will continue into the future. There is huge headroom for growth, huge headroom for premiumization. And as India grows, as India prospers, the opportunity for premiumization would be even bigger. And this is another reason which has contributed to our margin evolution. The other is digital.
Ten years back, our digital demand capture was virtually nothing, then we started on this journey of reimagining HUL, and today, 25% of our turnover is digitally captured. You will see today the journey that we have been on and the capabilities that we have built using data and technology, and we have done our benchmarking, and you would get to see why it is significantly ahead of any other FMCG company in the country. Financial excellence, our laser-like focus on discipline, our return on capital employed in three digits, our working capital. We started the practice of how you can have a negative working capital. Now, just think of it. The dynamics of growth, margin improvement, and return on capital employed, this is what has caused the kind of capital appreciation that we have delivered in the last 10 years.
To put things in perspective, our delta market cap in its own right would have been the 10th most valuable company in the country. That's the value that's got created through the three axes of growth, margin, and capital velocity. Now, over the last 10 years, we have, say, at the end of 2012, our portfolio was about INR 22,000 crore. Yeah. We are now about INR 50,000 crore. And you know how in the last six months we've added another INR 4,000 crore delta. Our EBITDA has increased by 4x, and our market cap has increased by 6x. That's been the mantra behind our value creation, and that's been the picture of success. I would like to pause here and first thank each one of you. Thank you for your support to Hindustan Unilever, and thank you for your support to me.
Over the last decade, many of you, I have not only got to know you personally, but I can very comfortably say that many of you have become my friends. Thank you for that. Now, doing well by doing good, this is something which is, again, very ingrained in us. So you will see through the pillars of climate and waste, on nature and on social, the activities that we do, the scale with which we do, and the impact that we create. Yeah. Look at Shakti, deep rural, making 160,000 entrepreneurs. Where, other than working in farms, they have no other options. When you empower a woman, you empower a household. Today, Shakti generates a turnover which is close to $500 million for us. That's the power of Shakti. Yeah. Or what we are talking about, the impact that we have.
I've spoken about water. Yeah. If we as a country are not able to solve the problem of water, the supply of water will be half the demand in the next decade or so. It's a very serious issue. In fact, yesterday we organized a very important roundtable where we had government representatives, representatives of NGO and civil society, representatives of corporations, where we got ideas on how do we scale, how do we democratize water management across the length and breadth of the country. Yeah. I've spoken about reducing our carbon emissions. I've spoken about plastics. Our commitments are very clear that by 2025, all our plastic packaging material will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable. And we are progressing wonderfully well in that direction. And for us, this is not just about the government asking us to spend 2% money on CSR. Shakti started much before CSR.
Our HUF, or our Water Conservation Initiative, started before CSR. If today the government were to abolish this law, we will still continue doing what we believe is right for the business, right for the society, right for the planet. Of course, we have an enlightened self-interest in it. [Foreign language] That's the reason we focus on it. Now, I'm a big believer in the India story. As president of FICCI, I was telling one of your colleagues here today that we've been working on what should be India's strategy for the next 25 years. We've roped in McKinsey. We had 200 CEOs working on it, and we're just about to finalize it. I think we should be able to share it with you in another couple of weeks. I'm extremely bullish about India.
A time has come when the world conspires to make India win, and it's not only going to be India's decade, but it's going to be India's decade and beyond. My optimism and bullishness of India then flows down to which better FMCG company than HUL to harness the benefit of a growing India? Yeah. As we are a very large economy, we crossed the $3 trillion mark. We are well poised to become the third largest in a couple of years. The demographics are in our favor. 20% of the world's working population is going to reside in India. Just think of it. For us, it's not a problem about aging population. It's a young working population. Urbanization. We have really not even kickstarted the urbanization story. Our urbanization is still in low 30s%.
When urbanization happens, when joint families break into nuclear families, the consumption of FMCG goes up significantly. Yeah. Look at the pyramid. And this is not the future data. This is historical data. From 8% affluent and elite to 15%, a 7% shift in households in India would mean 100 million people. That's what we are talking about. And that is what is fueling our thrust on premiumization. But just look at it. When India moves from an emerging market to a developing country, to a middle-income country, the premiumization would become even much larger. And that's what stares at us today. If you look at it, the market today, this pyramid is the market, is 22%, but we are over-indexed at over 30%. That's because of our thrust on premiumization. Yeah. Fundamentals of FMCG remain very strong, very attractive. Yeah.
The penetration level of many big categories is still significantly huge headroom to grow. Even HFD business, one of the big strategic rationales for acquiring these great brands of Horlicks and Boost was that the penetration was just about 25%. Then we are talking about under-indexed spends. This I'm not comparing with the developed markets. [Foreign language] developing markets [Foreign language] compare [Foreign language] . Just look at India and Philippines. I've run Philippines for Unilever. I know Indonesia now very well because I'm the non-executive chair over there. Yeah. It won't take long for India, if we have the kind of growth we are envisaging, to reach these levels. Yeah. The other is the rural opportunity. Rural is significantly under-indexed, and that has to go up. If India prospers, rural will be prospering. There's no option about that. Without rural, India will not be able to prosper.
Of course, the world is changing. Consumer behaviors are changing. The expectations are changing. And we spend a huge amount of time and money understanding the changing consumer behavior. That's core to how we run our business. Whether it is Unstereotype, whether it is holistic health, whether it is net zero, whether it is search for authenticity, or e-everything, or hyper-personalization. What better hyper-personalization at the trade level than our Shikhar app? And then you will get to see more from Kedar and the team how we are doing that. Search for authenticity is today pervading everything. It's a bit of a paradox. On one end, the consumers want everything digital. On the other hand, they want to go back to their roots. They want to go back to their culture. That's the reality of life. We understand that. We understand that ethos.
It goes into our innovation, and it goes into our communication. Now, this is a long-term strategic choice that we have picked up. It's about developing a portfolio. It is about winning with brands, brands with purpose and innovation, leading in the channels of the future because the market too is evolving, building differentiated structures and capabilities, and of course, having an organization which is ready for the future. For us, we have very clear beliefs. We have spoken about them many times. Sustainability is core to us. But we are here to prove that sustainable businesses also give outstanding financial performance. That's what we are here to prove. Our ESG goals, we have shared with you in earlier events. We are very clear. Goals with yearly milestones. My variable pay gets impacted with whether we are delivering on our ESG goals or not.
That's the seriousness with which we pursue our sustainability agenda. And it runs across whether it is on the social side, whether it is on the planet side. We are hugely focused on that. And we believe that's the role a corporation has to play in the new age, in the new world. It is not something which is woke for us. It is not something which is fad or fashion for us. This is core to what Hindustan Unilever is. Now, portfolio, very simple strategy I'll articulate. First is growing the core. Our core of the business has to remain very strong. And there you have to ensure that you have product superiority. There you have to ensure that you have built engagement platforms. Yeah. And there we also ensure that our spends behind our brands is more than a share of our market. The second is market development.
I've spoken about it. More users, more usage, more benefits, and the third important leg is premiumization. Yeah. And if those of you are very spreadsheet oriented, you might like to peep in the past to project the future, how market development and premiumization has changed the margin profile of the business, and how much more headroom there exists for us to do a similar act in the future. Yeah. Purpose and innovation. You know the kind of R&D we have, the kind of consumer and market insights function we have. We just completed 75 years of CMI function in the company. You'll get to see today our Agile Innovation Hub, how we track trends across the world, and we are able to factor in when those trends will come into India, and then how with speed we work on bringing the innovations to life.
You'll get to see that today. The other is our passion for product superiority. We firmly believe that the technology that we have, the R&D that we have, we need to deliver products which are functionally superior. Once you have a functionally superior product, and then when you're able to traverse the emotions of the consumers, that's how you make a timeless brand. And there are many timeless brands in our portfolio. And the other is purpose-driven growth. There are so many examples of great purpose leading to fabulous market-beating growth in our portfolio. Whether it is laundry, whether it is tea, whether it is hair, great examples of purpose-driven growth. Channels of the future. Yeah. We are very clear that in a country like India, you will not see the disappearance of the grocery channel. India is going to be different from the rest of the world.
Grocery is there to stay, but it will be a highly digitized grocery. And we will help the grocer on this digitization journey. That's where Shikhar comes in. That is where customizing the assortment comes in. Yeah. That's where we help the business, help the grocer do his business better. Or designing for channels. Every channel has its own nuances. You cannot be selling a same pack in all the channels. It won't work. So right from a stage of innovation, you need to design for the channels. That's what we do. And of course, new route to market, new route to shoppers. We have 14 D2C platforms today. That's what caters to building our brands and enabling the consumers to reach our brands. Winning in Many Indias is not easy to implement.
We have made it into a perfect science, and we keep going deeper with Winning in Many Indias. Not many of you would be knowing that if you consume Brooke Bond Red Label in different parts of India, the blend will be different because it caters to the palate of that part of India. If you take the same white Lux soap in different parts of India, don't come and complain to us the perfume is different because it is meant to be different. When you pick up Surf Excel in different parts of India, the formulation is different because it is catering to the needs of those consumers in that part of India. Now, this adds complexity, but like I keep reminding, it is like a high-density lipoprotein, good cholesterol. If you can manage this complexity, it gives you a competitive edge.
And not many companies will be able to replicate this. The other is our future-fit supply chain. Yogesh, we have got a fabulous leader in Yogesh. And you will see the work that is happening. How do we manufacture and distribute 60 billion pieces? How have we ensured that our non-raw material packaging material cost in manufacturing is the lowest in the world? Our cost is even lower than a business in China. Now, India, we are here to prove that you can have the best in cost, the best in quality, the best in customer service, and the best in innovation. That's how you win the marketplace. I've spoken about Reimagine HUL. What a journey it has been. You will see Arun, Meenakshi, Kedar, Yogesh talk about that, Akhilesh. And for us, Reimagine HUL is not just about marketing. It is not about D2C.
D2C and marketing is a small part of the value chain that has been digitized. Ours is end-to-end value chain. And you'll get to see what a different value chain we have created. And the HUL of tomorrow is going to be dramatically different from the HUL of yesterday. For us, like I said, purpose-led and future-fit is so important. The culture that we have in HUL is very unique. It's a very high performance-oriented culture. It's a culture of outperform. It's a culture where we recruit the best and make them better. It's a culture where we are very inclusive. It's not just about diversity. People have a right to speak their mind. People have a right to bring their own self. People have a right to be comfortable in their skin, air their views without fear or favor. That's the kind of culture we have created in HUL.
Of course, the organization that we have, we keep evolving to be ready for the new age. Now, I'm giving you some insights into our value creation model. Yeah. The first important bit is growth. The growth starts with the mindset. You have to first believe there is massive opportunity in the marketplace. None of our categories are matured. Maturity is only sometimes in the minds of a marketer, not in reality. Yeah. We have proven how, even in a category like laundry, which is nearly 100% penetrated, the kind of growth that we have delivered. Growth comes from portfolio. Growth comes from innovation. Growth comes from market development, and growth comes from premiumization. That's what I've shared with you. The second is distinctive capabilities. To really outperform, you need to have capabilities which are distinctive and hard to replicate.
The work that we have done on Nakshatra, the work that we have done on Reimagine HUL, the work that we have done on WIMI, are absolutely distinctive capabilities which our competitors will find it hard to replicate, and the third important bit is the high performance and not me. The culture that we have, the fetish for execution that we have, the way we craft our strategy, and very importantly, the paranoid we are, the humility that we have. We respect all our competitors. We dream big, but we keep our feet planted on the ground. That's the culture that we have built. That's what goes into high performance and not me. We are obsessed with our consumers and customers. We have a deep passion, passion to win, passion to make a difference to the country, passion to make a difference to the society and the planet.
We have an owners' mindset. We do not treat ourselves as employees of the company. We live and breathe HUL. When HUL wins, when HUL's market cap goes up, it may not be impacting my personal wealth, but we believe in the same manner. That's the same joy it gives us. That's the owners' mindset we bring to the party. We are very dissatisfied with the status quo. We keep challenging ourselves and like ourselves. A combination of ambition and humility is ambition. And that's what we firmly believe in. I certainly believe, having been in this role now for my 10th year, we have never been as strong. And I also firmly believe our best is yet to come. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much for listening to me.
Hello. I feel good to be back in India, to be heading the biggest category for Hindustan Unilever.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, all my friends who are here today and also joined online. It gives me great pleasure to be meeting you all physically, which I think is a big departure from how we've been living in the last few years. Welcome to the exciting world of Beauty and Personal Care. I would be referring to this as BPC going forward. Over the next 20 minutes, myself and my co-presenter, Harman, would be taking you through what makes this business such a big successful business. And importantly, going forward, the strategic pillars that we have built in, already in operation, how do we accelerate, bring more agility to continue to win in the future? First, let's take a look at this business. It's a powerhouse. It's a jewel in the crown of Hindustan Unilever.
It is the largest business and close to INR 20,000 crores in turnover, nearly doubling in the last decade. Profitable too, more than doubling the profitability in the same time period. If you look at the positions that Sanjiv talked about, in most of the big categories, we have leading positions and some of the largest categories in the country. Number one in skin cleansing, number one in hair care, number one in other parts of the business. In oral, we are number two and fighting hard to get it better. We have iconic brands. Seven of our brands have a turnover of more than INR 1,000 crores, and you can see them. Three of those, Glow & Lovely, Lifebuoy, and the Dove masterbrand, are actually more than INR 2,000 crores.
So this is a phenomenal business with an absolutely stunning portfolio of brands that have an amazing heritage and strength in this country. So if you look at some of the other parts of scale when we talk about this business, nine out of 10 households use at least one of our brands every day in their lives. So these are household brands that a lot of us have grown up with. And when we talk about the equity of the brands, which we measure through rigorous mechanisms, and we call it brand power, most of our brands figure in the top bracket of brand power, again, as measured by consumers. And the reach, unparalleled. We have the highest reach for this category in the country in any channel that you can think of, whether it is general trade, modern trade.
We also have 10 D2C websites for our brands in BPC. So really in line with emerging channels as well. So this gives us the strength, the foundations to build on, to continue to win in the future. And it's part of the strategy that we've been operationalizing. There are four pillars to our strategy. The first one is really about contemporizing the core, which continues to be a big part of our business. How do we continue to win market share, grow ahead of the market on the core? And that's something that we will talk about. Agility and turbocharging some parts of the business. Sanjiv referred to premiumization. How do we continue to drive this journey even aggressively going forward with an ambition of at least two times the market growth, if not more?
Market development, the competitive edge that we've built on for many decades, how do we bring that into action to create more categories, premium categories, build scale as we look at the BPC categories that are emerging in the future? Finally, it's about winning in the channels of the future and bringing more edge into specialist channels, whether it is cosmetics or whether it is pharma, e-commerce, D2C, and continuing to do well in the channels where we can win today, modern trade or general trade. And these are underpinned with key enablers, the facilitators that will help us win, whether it is about Winning in Many Indias and the competitive edge that we have. It's about leveraging the best of the global technologies in BPC and winning through relevant innovations, scaled-up innovations.
It's also about best-in-class digital capability, upper end of the funnel, performance marketing, capabilities that will continue to build brands in this channel and win in the future, and finally, it's our deep commitment to purposeful brands and for sustainability. Let's look at a few of these things in a bit more detail. The first one is about contemporizing the core and making the core more relevant to the emerging consumer segments and demand spaces. Let me illustrate that with the example of Glow & Lovely. After the transformation of Glow & Lovely from Fair & Lovely, this brand is really on the run in keeping itself relevant to the emerging needs. What we have here on the picture is an innovation that is moving this brand from the base cream about tone management into higher-order benefits of tone management plus hydration. Yeah.
It comes in a jar, away from the tubes, talks to millennials in a language that they understand, staying true to the proposition. Contemporizing Glow & Lovely is a signal on how the rest of the portfolio is going to move. Talk about purpose. Sanjiv mentioned that at the core of everything that we do is our commitment to deep purpose. We believe in the golden triangle of running brands, which is performance that delights consumers in a functional way, emotionally satisfying the consumer. Third one is having a deep social impact that is relevant, that builds love for the brands. Let me illustrate what we mean by purpose through Clinic Plus. The key here is linking the functional proposition of the brand to the societal impact. Clinic Plus stands for strong hair and nothing better than moms raising strong daughters because that is a societal need today.
We need to raise strong daughters and girls in India today. So let's see how this articulation has come alive in the advertising for Clinic Plus, which is strongly purposeful at the core. Can we have the Clinic Plus ad, please?
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
As the father of a daughter, every time I watch this ad, it leaves me teary-eyed. Apart from purposeful brands, we also have enduring platforms. We call them the activation platforms. Lakmé Fashion Week, the number one, the marquee event on fashion, now twice a year, or the autumn and the winter editions over two decades. No wonder Lakmé is the number one cosmetics brand in the country and continues to fly high.
It's about our commitment to sustainability, and it's not just about plastics, where we are trying very hard to raise the game for the country, for the industry, by lesser plastic, quality of the plastic to be better. It's also about thinking ahead on things like palm oil and sustainable sourcing. We call it our commitment to NDPE, no deforestation, no peatland development, no exploitation of palm, which goes into as a raw material for our skin cleansing business, and we stand by the Unilever commitment here, which is to source all NDPE as of end of 2023. So let's look at the fundamentals of growth that help us to build these brands. The first one is superiority. We do believe that at the starting point of building any brand is product superiority, and we do this in a very rigorous, very high standards of consumer evaluation.
We do it in a blind way, which is testing products in a blind way from the consumers, and I can tell you that most of our brands are either superior or parity. When compared to pre-COVID levels, 2X the number of our brands have become superior. The second one is overlaying the blind superiority that we have with winning communication. Our media investment chairs effective communications. Nine out of our 10 ads that go on air or on digital are proven to be highly effective. They figure in the top quadrant, again, as measured by consumers through very rigorous methodologies. The third one is about Winning in Many Indias. As a rule, we look at how do we de-average, how do we create mixes that are relevant to different consumer clusters in the country. Example is Lux. Sanjiv referred to it.
The Lux that one smells in the western part of India is going to be different to what one smells in the east and the north because the fragrance profiles and the consumer drivers of what they appreciate as good fragrance are different. So these are fundamentals that we die by when we build brands, and that has held us in good stead. Let's talk about the second pillar, which is about turbocharging premiumization. We've been doing premiumization, but now is the moment to bring more energy, agility, and we call it turbocharging. We want to grow in multiples and not at small percentages or incrementals. I will illustrate this through the example of skin cleansing, where we have the co-brands, Lux and Lifebuoy.
Premiumization is all about getting into Dove and Pears, which are actually growing high, and they are significantly priced premium to the core and will continue to contribute a significant proportion of our incremental profitable growth in the future. That's about bars, but let's talk about the other formats, liquids in skin cleansing. Again, the body washes, penetrations are still very low. Dove, Pears, Lifebuoy Handwash, they all have a big role to play, and they continue to be on song. Intimate hygiene, VWash the new brand that we acquired in 2020, a leader in its segment, highly profitable, will drive market development and premiumization in skin cleansing. Here I pause and I invite my colleague Harman to talk about the other two categories of premiumization, hair and skincare. Over to you, Harman.
Thank you, Madhu.
Sanjiv spoke about, and Madhu spoke about how premiumization is the bedrock through which we'll create value in the decades to come. I want to share a couple of such stories. The first one being hair care. We've always been market leaders for the last couple of decades with very, very high penetration. But the shift we are seeing in transformation is how do we reshape the portfolio by really bottling all the magic potions which the consumer needs to change the way their hair looks and to change the way they feel. We believe what we have innovated in the last couple of years through higher-order benefits, through offering more regimes, through formats, whether it's serums or masks, by offering clean beauty solutions is catering to the ever-evolving needs of this consumer.
No wonder what we have managed to do is really add a huge amount of competitive delta to our market shares. And we stand at the highest ever shares in the last two decades in haircare, which is now three times of our next competitor. Continuing on this journey, the other story I want to share is on skincare. This is the category where if you look back a decade ago, we were the market leaders in tone management. And Madhu referred to it, the consumer is changing. Why are they changing? Because they are in a different stage of age. They have different demographics. The weather in the country is different, and they are realizing the skincare needs are also going to be different in the future.
What we've managed to do within skincare is move from just being the market leader in tone management, which was the case a decade ago, to being the number one player in all the emerging demand spaces. For example, hydration delivered through light moisturization, sun care, anti-aging, holistic glow. We've done this not just by innovations on existing creams. We've done this by introducing a whole host of new formats, which are upcoming, easier to use, sensorily superior than what the consumer is used to. I think this journey of transformation would be incomplete without talking about the market development that we've done in BPC. As the market leaders, we are also very, very cognizant of the fact it is upon us to be the market makers.
There were three big bets we took in the last decade to really grow the market and get more consumers to use facial cleansing, which is face washes, body lotions, and adopt hair conditioner in the regimen. I think in the last decade, as the market leaders, what we've managed to do is double the penetration in these segments. As we saw, sky is the limit in these categories because still per capita consumption of these products is way lower than other developing markets. Those three bets that we already had in the last decade, here is the list of what are going to be our big bets in the next decade. Again, they stem from the fact, what are the needs of the consumers which are emerging? Light moisturizers, everybody in the room will know India is a very, very hot country.
The sensorials that they need are much more water-like. That's what we are betting big on. An amalgamation of makeup into skincare, which is the BB and CC creams, is the next gel, sunscreen, body wash, and intimate hygiene. These, along with the three that we already have, will reshape the BPC portfolio in the next decade. I'm really happy to share that not only are we number one in the big bets that we had taken last year and a close second in facial cleansing, but in all the emerging formats where we've already started to make a play, we are already the market leaders. It is incumbent upon us to really grow the pie so that we grow as the country adopts these formats. Now, what is the secret sauce?
Sanjiv and Madhu both alluded to it, that market development is a science that we have learned over time and perfected. I think at the heart of it are four things. First, we really understand the consumer need for the product. Second, we demonstrate that need through demonstrations while going to their houses. Sanjiv mentioned a scale of 100 million contacts every year. BPC, out of that 100 million, is going to 25 million houses to show the difference when the consumer uses this product, which it can make to their lives. The second one is educating the consumer as to how to use these products. And that's where we are upping our spends 5X to educate the consumer how to use it in the right way.
The third, and one of the analysts was speaking to me before the presentation, is it is so important since we are asking the consumers to increase their repertoire, to pay more for these products that at point of sale, when there is so much of proliferation, what is it that they should buy? And we have investments with beauty experts at scale at point of sale, which help to explain to the consumers what these products do and why they should be adopting it. And last but not the least, we are very, very cognizant of the fact that if we are asking the consumers to really pay top dollar, we must ensure that we are giving them these delightful products at a price which is closer to source of growth.
So that's the secret sauce which goes behind the repeatable model which we are going to go behind in the 10 segments that I spoke about. And last but not the least, I think underpinning this entire premiumization and market development story is our undying commitment to the fact that it's only when we deliver superior products will consumers be delighted and want to pay the premium when they use these products. We have massive R&D support, not just, of course, in India with top scientists, but also global technologies that we bring to India. And I'm going to just share two examples of how the technologies that we have in our products in BPC are way better than what is available in the market or in the competitive products. So can I have the GAP AV first, please?
To study the efficacy of our GAP Technology, we use an iodine solution which depicts dull skin. We add the four different solutions in four glasses: water, vitamin C, glutathione, and GAP. We keep the mixture for 10 seconds and stir. The GAP Technology clears all the impurities from the solution,
and in quick succession, if we can show the ProLipid one as well, please. That's what we had on the market development and premiumization pillar. Back to you, Madhu.
Thank you, Harman. We looked at contemporizing the core as the first pillar. We looked at premiumization, turbocharging. We looked at market development. The last one is about winning in the channels of the future. What are we talking about? We're talking about continuing to win in modern trade. We want to win in e-com, and we want to win in the specialist channels that are emerging.
Let's take an example of modern trade where the consumers look for range. They want to interact. Great example is the Dove hair treatment range or the TRESemmé Salon professional range that are very much in now. If I take the example of what we can do in the case of, say, a pharma channel where consumers are looking for problem solution, their interaction is much more detailed. They look for education. VWash, intimate hygiene for period care is a great example here, or anti-dandruff through Indulekha or the Dove range. And lastly, when we talk about very specific examples on what consumers are looking for other channels, whether it is fancy or cosmetic, where it's about trends, they want to know what is really happening in the world of beauty and where demonstration, product experience is key.
A great example is the new formats of TRESemmé, like serums or Lakmé, the cosmetic range of liquid lipsticks, matte, satin finish bullets, where consumers would want to be educated and participate. So that's the reason why we believe it's really about designing portfolios that are fit for the channel. Channel-first thinking in designing our portfolios and our innovations will give us the edge to continue to win. And you can see that happening on a number of brands. So it is really about the transformation we are talking about. Digital, and we already made a lot of progress here. In the last couple of years, we've set up our own incubation unit, which is called the Premium Beauty Business Unit, PBBU in short. We've launched five brands, and two of them have landed in the last couple of months.
I will take the specific example of what is called Acne Squad. This is not a one-solution-fits-all kind of a product. This has actually dissected the evolution of acne into four stages, dermatologically tested, recommended by the top dermatologists, and really at masstige pricing, D2C, and also in the marketplace. That's Acne Squad as an example of what PBBU is doing. We've also launched other brands, and we want to scale them up as we go forward. Some great results, whether it is Simple, which has been launched and is doing exceptionally well, leapfrog growth in the last few months on the number of retentions that we have while the cost of acquisition keeps coming down, the growth in market share, or our Love Beauty and Planet, which has been gaining smartly on awareness and on retention.
So good successes that are building up, and I'm sure one of some of them at least would be scaled up as we talk about the future. So bringing it all together, we do believe that our strategy, which has been successful, will get additional boost and agility as we go forward. And we do have the right to continue to win in this market and shape the market, really create categories, build our iconic brands, bring in new brands, drive the channels of the future, bring in the best of the global technologies, and make it executionally the best in the world, which we are all known for. So that, I believe, gives us the template to continue to win in the BPC category. We've added over INR 1,800 crores in the last one year.
That's much bigger than many of the brands put together in the space of digital or any of the new brands that are coming in. And we want to continue to build on our purpose, which is about delighting consumers and making them look good, feel good, and smell great, which is all about the wonder of beauty, the allure, and the romance of beauty. Thank you very much. I hand over to my next colleague.
Thank you, Madhu. Thank you, Harman. And now we move from the beautiful world of HPC to the cleaning world of Home Care. Our category, our business is founded on solving the pain points and gain points that emerge as we take care of our clothes and as we take care of our homes.
For me, it's an absolute privilege to come back to HUL after many years in Unilever and to help to steer and take this business to the next level. Our Home Care business in HUL also happens to be the largest Unilever Home Care business in the world, so it's absolutely great. Over the next 20 minutes, Mohit and myself will take you through the growth opportunity for Home Care in India and why we believe as HUL we are absolutely well poised to lead the development of our categories over the next decade. Let me start off first by looking at the journey over the last 10 years, and it has truly been a decade of transformation. In 2010, we had a business of about INR 6,000 crore, and over the last 10 odd years, we have grown our turnover by almost two and a half times.
In the last financial year, we had a turnover of close to INR 16,000 crores. Over the same period, we grew the profits in our business by a factor of 7X, and there's been a total transformation in the profitability of our business. I think what's really heartening is that this financial transformation has been absolutely competitive, and we have improved our market share by almost 500 basis points over the last decade. Underpinning this financial transformation is a portfolio shift. We have done a massive portfolio shift over the last 10 years. If you look at our portfolio 10 years ago, almost 60% of our business came from mass laundry or our Wheel business.
Fast forward 10 years later, and while the overall business has grown, what we now see is that the mass laundry business is about a third of our business, but we have built a massive premium laundry business, and that's now close to 50% of our portfolio. So while we had strong category positions, this portfolio shift has helped us to strengthen our portfolio and strengthen our positions in laundry, in dish, our strong number one positions that we had, and also helped us to get to a strong challenger position when it comes to surface cleaning. So that's about the past. Let me now look forward, and I think, as has been said many times today, Rising India will pose fantastic growth opportunities for Home Care over the next decade.
What you see on the left-hand side is, as consumers get more incomes and as they premiumize, they tend to spend more on our categories, and that factor goes up by a factor of three. This is underpinned by some pretty significant changes in the consumer landscape. What we see is a lot more washing happening through washing machines. Washing machine penetration in India is about 15% and is likely to explode over the coming years. All of us will have wardrobes which will have more clothes and with different fabrics, be it silks, be it viscose, be it polyesters, and all of these will result in new pain points that will emerge and which we are well placed to resolve. As India becomes richer, we will all move into bigger homes, and we will have many more surfaces, wooden floors, marble tops, more appliances at home.
And all of these will create new pain points which we are ready and well poised to solve. And of course, as you heard, all our consumers, all of us are going to be shopping in new channels, and a lot of the new channels are absolutely well placed to drive discovery-led shopping and to help the development of new formats. So we are really excited about the growth opportunity that exists for our categories through premiumization and market development. That is why our strategy remains unchanged. For many of you who were in the room last year, you will recognize this chart. This is absolutely the same chart that we presented last year. And our strategy to consistently win has four pillars. The first one is to premiumize our core, and our core is largely our bars and our powders business.
We have a fantastic portfolio going from price index 80 all the way to price index 200. Through superior products, persuasive communication, and a proven track record here, we wish to premiumize within our core. Reflecting the new opportunities that are coming up, which I spoke about in the previous slide, driving market development for new formats is a second big growth opportunity, be it capsules, be it machine dishwash, be it fabric conditioners, a whole host of opportunities that lie. We believe we have the capability, the insights, and the portfolio to be able to drive the development of these new formats. As has been talked about again today, winning in new channels will help us to drive our portfolio forward. India is undergoing a channel transformation, as we all know.
And one of the experiences that I bring back from having worked in many parts of Unilever is the absolute need to have a design-for-channel portfolio, be it in terms of portfolio design, content, or how we execute. The needs of our shoppers are different, be it when they shop in e-commerce or be it when they shop in modern trade. And when we address those different shopper needs with the right design, magic happens. And finally, we are on a mission as Home Care to pioneer what we call Clean Future. We recognize that all our products are made from fossil fuel chemistry and a bit of old high-carbon technologies. And as new technologies, especially in biotech, start to come up, we are really pioneering the move away from fossil fuel products to products that are renewable and through that address the carbon footprint that we have.
All of this is then captured in our mission, which is to make our world a better home. That reflects the synchronous relationship that exists between the impact that our products have in the homes and in the world around us. I therefore now focus on the heart of our presentation, the drivers of premiumization and market development. Our whole category growth story is based on this, and I want to call out four key elements that are underpinning this growth. The first one is a portfolio that is designed to address pain points. Number two is building brands with purpose, building trust, and a very strong emotional connection with our consumers. The third one is investing in technologies that help us drive superior products.
The fourth one is building scaled executional models that help us to address the different needs of our consumers in different ways. I will cover the first two, and then I'm going to request Mohit to take us through technology and execution. Let's start with portfolio. How do we address our consumer pain points? We have a framework, which I want to share with you today and then take you through one example of how we deploy that framework into one of our portfolios. Everything, of course, starts with the consumer, and we call this our Winning in Many Indias strategy. We have a lot of insight and a lot of rigor in how we de-average the consumer understanding. Let me take the example of fabric care. All the pain points emerge from four fundamental factors. How do consumers wash? The washing pathway.
Is it hand or machine wash? What's the water quality? Is it hard water or soft water? What's the weather like? Is it hot, humid, or cold? And what's the fabric type? Is it cottons or is it synthetics? Now, all of these interact to create very, very different pain points. But the important point is that these are not all happening at the same time across India in the same way. The weather, water, fabric type, and washing pathways are different, and we have a granular understanding of how these play out in each one of the 15 clusters that we operate with in India. So that's the de-averaging insights that we have. And therefore, we end up really being able to address close to 200 different pain points in our categories. I've called out some of the bigger ones here, but this goes all the way.
Because we de-average this and because we understand which are the ones that are really meaningful, we then don't run our business through one all-India strategy. We de-average, and we have almost 150 different opportunity cells. These are the cells where the pain point is meaningful, and we believe we can bring technology to address this in a totally differentiated way. This is our design framework for how we design products to address pain points. I'm going to take you through one example of our laundry liquids business on how we then design a portfolio to address these pain points. This is our laundry liquids portfolio, and this is, of course, addressing the washing machine opportunity in India. At the base of our portfolio are liquids that are created for the big footprint of washing machines. Most washing machines in India are top loaders.
You either have semi-automatics or fully automatics. And our entry portfolio is a liquid that addresses the pain point in a semi-automatic machine or a fully automatic top loader. Then there are a whole set of machines which are front loaders, and they have a different set of pain points. And that's why we have a laundry liquid that addresses the pain point of a front loader. And finally, there are many consumers who say, "Simplify my life. I don't want to have the complexity of having multiple products. Give it to me all and make my life very, very simple." And for them, we have the three-in-one pod that addresses the pain points that they have. So this is just one example of how we construct our portfolio in liquids. It's absolutely the same when it comes to bars, powders, fabric conditioners.
I hope you see how we move from a design framework to then creating a portfolio that addresses the pain points. I then move to the second part, which is building brands with purpose. Why is this important? When we do this, we build trust, we build credibility around our performance credentials, and we have a strong emotional connection. That's really important because when we ask consumers to adopt new formats, when we ask them to premiumize, there are a lot of barriers that come up. Building brands which have trust and which have strong emotional connections address the barriers that come in the way of premiumization and market development. Now, all of us have grown up seeing many of these wonderful ads that have come up. I think especially great is what we do with Surf Excel.
Surf Excel is now poised to become HUL's first billion-dollar brand. It's going to happen sometime in the coming period. This brand has a philosophy which is articulated as, "Dirt is good." A deep, deep belief that as children get dirty, that's when they learn and develop to the maximum. I want to share with you today the advertising that we did earlier this year for Holi. So can I have the Holi advertising, please?
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Yeah. As the parent of some college-going kids, this brings tears to my eyes because I remember my kids when they were smaller. The second one is Vim, and this is a brand that was awarded recently in Cannes, the fastest-growing brand of the decade globally. And I think this is absolutely testimony to the great work done by this brand in driving market development and bringing a whole new generation of users into its franchise. This brand is on a mission to challenge some of the gender stereotypes that exist around cleaning. And I want to share with you the advertising that we put out this year for our dishwash liquids.
So can I have the Vim advertising, please?
[Foreign language]
Yeah, it was nice to see many of the ladies in the room smiling. So I think that's really nice.
And I'm now going to hand it over to Mohit, who will take us through how we use technology to drive superiority. Mohit, over to you.
Thank you, Deepak. The third pillar in our strategy for premiumization and market development is technology. And what we've really done over the last decade is really build a pipeline of technology that allows us to give irresistible consumer superiority. Now, what this does is twofold. One, not only do you get impactful demos, but you also get concepts that actually flow into consumer communication. And hence, that's what our consumers consider before they actually buy our products. What I'm going to do is really showcase to you two parts of our portfolio. The first is bars. And what you actually have in bars is something called Polymer Tech.
Now, what Polymer Tech does, it allows our bars to actually last far longer in the actual wash process than any other competitive bar in the market, so soggy mush, which is a key consumer pain point, is the lowest for using Polymer Tech in Rin bar vis-à-vis any other bar. Can I have the Polymer Tech video, please? The second part of the portfolio I really want to talk about is fabric conditioners or Comfort. Now, what we have in Comfort is something what we call the Pro Care Technology, and what Pro Care Technology does is actually delivers superior fragrance benefit along with great credentials during the wash process, so what this means is when the consumer is actually using only detergent, she feels a significant difference vis-à-vis using detergent and fabric conditioner in the wash process. Can I have the Pro Care Fabcon video, please?
The next pillar really, again, in our strategy for both premiumization and market development is the ability to build execution models that are really based on scaled deployment models. Execution, they say, eats strategy for breakfast, and what I'm going to do is really showcase two execution models to you. Deepak referred to the fact that when you really de-average India in terms of laundry pain points, and on top of that mirror our Winning in Many Indias structure, you get as many as 150 de-averaged opportunity cells. Now, the only way we can meaningfully actually address at least a small amount of these is our entire distributed operation structure. So what this really boils down to is a set of factories and a set of sales offices that are spread across the country. What does it mean in terms of actual execution?
In actual execution, it means that we can have as many as four to five different formulations for the same brand. So the Surf Excel Easy Wash you buy in Gomti Nagar is very different from the Surf Excel Easy Wash that you buy in Chakala. Now, what this also allows us to do is for a very large portfolio like ours, we have large volumetric brands like Easy Wash, at the same time have smaller opportunities such as liquids or variants. It allows our agile supply chain management system to give us both volumes and scale and really balance that with agility and responsiveness when required. The second part of our execution process is really market development at scale. This is our ability to actually sample out to a very large part of the country.
So we understand the affluence pyramid of this country really well, and we've got bespoke models that allow us to sample at scale to each of these affluence pyramids. So for middle-class households, we actually have our home-to-home program. For the more elite households, we've got our society activation. For digital-savvy consumers, we've got SmartPick. And then finally, if you walk into a Modern Trade store, you'll find a warm body there who will actually tell you what the benefits of our products in the shopping aisle are. This is a really large capability we have. We do close to about 70 million contacts a year. That's the equivalent of knocking on every door in Germany in a single year, showing them a demo at their doorstep, and being able to convert that to an actual verified sale.
So from 70 million contacts, we do about 35 to 40 million actual conversions on a yearly basis for Home Care at the point of sale. Finally, the last part of our execution strength is really designing for channel. I think Deepak talked about this. And really, this is our ability to have a bespoke assortment by channel based on our differentiated and de-averaged understanding of the shopper behavior in that channel. So the two examples here, the top row is really Comfort, and the bottom row is dishwash liquid. So taking the example of Comfort, we've got a INR 4 sachet that sells predominantly in GT or traditional trade. Modern trade obviously moves on to flexis and larger bottles. Ecom has very specific variants which actually give premium benefits to those shoppers. And then finally, the emerging Unilever Professional channel has the really bulk packs of 5 liters.
This is a capability that really allows us to pick the right pack at the right price point for the right channel based on our understanding of the shopper journey in that particular channel. On that note, I hand it back to Deepak.
Thank you. So I come back to where I started. We had a fantastic decade of transformative growth, and we believe that we are absolutely ready to repeat it and drive it forward this decade also. There is enormous headroom for growth. We are a business which is more than INR 16,000 crores. And yet, when I do the benchmarking from a per capita consumption point of view, we are still at the bottom end of the scale. And some of the countries on this scale, I have personally managed, and I can see the amount of headroom that is there for growth.
Our portfolio is future-ready, and I think that you will see, and this is shown in the second slide, more than 70% of the volumes in the market are still in the mass end, but our market shares, as we move from the mass end to the premium end, go up by a factor of three. And therefore, we truly believe that as the market premiumizes, we have a tailwind that works for us. And of course, we have to lead it, and finally, we have a proven track record when it comes to market development. You would have heard of the fact that we built a more than INR 2,000 crore laundry liquid business over the last seven years, but glass half full, half empty, only one in 10 homes in India uses a laundry liquid. And therefore, there's just so much headroom for growth.
So thank you all for hearing me out. And I'm now going to pass it on to Tan, who will take us through F&R.
Good afternoon, everybody. I think I have two things to tell you before I start. One, unlike the two people who presented, you will not see my tears well up. All of the tears I lost in the semifinal when India played so well against England. And the second, after this is lunch, so I will be precise and finish on time so that I don't eat into that section of yours. Yeah. To start with, let me talk a bit about F&R and how we see the business. I think over a long period of time, the first aspect that really comes through is consistent delivery as far as top line is concerned, along with consistent improvement in margins.
I think that's one thing that we are confident that the business model we have really stands the test of time. With the acquisition of Horlicks and the portfolio that came along with it, we've also now got scale. And therefore, that really sums up our journey on F&R so far. One of the things Sanjiv has also mentioned is our position across the different categories we operate in. So we are either a strong number two or number one in most of the segments. Again, if you take a de-averaged view of this, even where we are number two, you break down to markets, there are markets where we have leadership even there. And what we think and how we approach it is that is because of the strength of our brands, but it also comes with the responsibility of developing these markets.
That is a consistent theme that you will see across divisions, that where we have the right to develop the market, you will see us invest big time. We are quite proud to have the portfolio of brands, as you can see on the slide. Why do we think we have the right? Because when we get it right, we are able to do long-term competitive wins. You can see across the portfolio, when you look at competitiveness, it's a very, very strong picture. Now, the easy thing is those are the results. I'll spend a little bit of time trying to go behind what makes this work. Hopefully, after what you saw Madhu and Deepak present, you won't find many things surprising here. Our pillars of growth, irrespective of the category, stand on the same fundamentals.
The first one is to invest behind the core, and there are two aspects we look at in Foods and Refreshment. One is making the advertising more purposeful, and the second is consistent investment in raising the quality of our product. The second, where we have leading positions to build the segments of the future, and that's where market development becomes the heart of our plan, and of course, winning in channels of the future, I'll spend very less time on it because Deepak's already elaborated it, and it's quite similar as far as F&R is concerned. The nuances that are different for us is we are presented with an incredible opportunity to nourish brilliant lives, and which is what is the promise the HFD portfolio brings with this, and Krish, my colleague, will take you through how we are going about this.
As far as Ice Creams are concerned, it's a less talked-about category but offers huge potential for growth. And where we are leaders, we are looking to de-seasonalize by owning the seasons. Last but not the least, while you've seen the what, behind the what is the how, and one of the things that's consistent is investment behind sustainable practices and building our capabilities. When you talk about sustainable practices, a key thrust for us in F&R is how we source. So 100% sustainably sourced tea, coffee, dairy, and tomato is our ambition. In some, we are very close to the ambition. In some, we've got some work to do. In terms of capability, we are building with the explosion of QSRs and last-mile delivery. For us, scale on influencers and expert recommendation is a key capability that we are building.
And last but not the least, as packaged foods in India move from the 10% contribution higher, it's going to be super critical for us to raise the game on the Nutrition standard. And as a business, HUL will be on the forefront of WHO-recommended highest Nutrition standards, which will soon also become a law in the country. When you look at these priorities and you then see what's the status so far, if you look at growing the core, I said there are two aspects for it. It's making the communication more purposeful and consistently investing behind product. And one aspect that Madhu spoke about was blind product superiority. We are quite obsessed about raising the quality of our products that we present. And in this year versus last year, more than 2x of our products have moved to blind product superiority.
We've also revamped our packaging this year on 40% of our portfolio to make it consistently aspirational. The second aspect is market development. Sanjiv articulated the scale of market development as a company. If I were to look at pure number of contacts, we are quite at the forefront of it with over 70 million samples that we do. It's really a powerhouse as far as Foods & Refreshment are concerned, and the early signs on it, when we acquired the HFD business, one of the key things that we said that we see an opportunity is bringing in new users into the category of HFD, and that's really going well. I've spoken about owning the seasons on Ice Cream, and that's something that we saw three of our products come out this year, be it Nolen Gur in Puja or during Diwali.
We've got Gulab Jamun Ice Cream or milk cake. With a simple insight of we can own the occasions by participating in the large dessert market, not by fighting dessert, but combining the best of dessert along with Ice Cream. In terms of channels of the future, it's been steady progress. We are growing much faster in the channels of the future with 5x e-com growth or modern trade growth. This has also been competitive, and last but not the least, I said there is scope for us to do a lot more here, but when you look at sustainably sourced, 100% is already there on chicory. We will get there on tomato sooner than later, and we've got some work to do before 100% of tea is sustainably sourced. That in a nutshell is where we are as far as the priorities.
In the interest of time, I'm going to take a few categories and really talk about it over a longer period of time. The first one is tea and really bring alive how these fundamentals that I spoke about or the strategy plays out. One of the big aspects that is positive for us on tea is powerhouse of brands. And we've seen ability to shape behavior with the quality of communication on Red Label. That's something that remains consistent. Our belief on Red Label is that common ground is just a cup of tea away. And all of our communication comes from there. At the same time, there is a flywheel on tea. There's a large market, which is loose tea, which is close to a third of the market. And that's where we have an offering on Taaza to really upgrade from loose to packaged tea.
But that is going to come in, and it's going to require funds, which is why it is absolutely imperative for us to invest at the top end and create premiumization opportunities as well as new segments. And whether it's Red Label Natural Care or it is indeed the tea bags, those are two examples of us investing to build segments of future. So when Sanjiv spoke about 10,000 crores being created from the F&R fold, you've got Red Label Natural Care, you've got tea bags, and indeed a brand like Taj. Now, what is behind this is about tea being one of the poster child of Winning In Many Indias. And just like laundry, in tea, the tea that you get in Punjab on Red Label is going to be very different from what you get in Maharashtra. Why is it so?
Because our method of preparation in different parts of the market is different, and what we expect, whether it's the color of the tea, the strength of the tea is dramatically different. And therefore, like Sanjiv said, this we believe is very good portfolio, very good complexity because we're creating an end cup that is perfectly designed for the way she makes her tea in the market she is in. And this requires a step up in the technology that comes through on our tea. And here we are blessed to have state-of-the-art R&D. These R&D facilities and the science behind our tea are all in-house, and they all reside in Bangalore. Now, that alone is not enough to build a powerhouse tea business. We do have enormous strength in procurement, which gives us the leverage in terms of how we buy and when we buy.
Last but not the least, we do have a state-of-the-art Beverages Excellence Centre, which has the highest scale of tasting of tea that is done in the country. So when you combine all this, you can see at the back end there's a really powerful machine which is able to deliver superior products, which we're able to bring to the fore with quite some compelling advertising. Now, one of the things that's happened for us through the day is we've rushed through from one presentation to the other. And typically, on any day, you need some time to wind down and slow down. That's the simple insight on the basis of the Taj Mahal tea ad. It talks to all of us who have rushed lives to have a little bit of time to slow down, pause, and reflect.
So let me give you that 30 seconds of slowing down, pausing, and reflecting. Can we play the Taj advertising, please?
[Foreign language]
Moving forward from tea, in terms of foods, again, blessed to have brands with leadership position, be it Kissan, Knorr. And one of the things that some of you asked me in the morning as well is, why aren't we doing many different launches to grow? That seems to be the narrative everywhere. Our belief is that Kissan as a brand is really strong in the area of dressings.
Therefore, in that space, it's a segmented space where we will bring in products, but we will invest behind it to build that market over a multi-year period. So two years back, we launched peanut butter. We stayed the course on it, continued to invest in it. And as you can see from the share, you can see it building. And in two years, it's greater than 15% share. Again, the combination is go deep in the geographies we prioritize and stay invested to build that segment. Likewise, we had a bold call out in terms of building the mayonnaise category because Unilever globally has clear strengths in this. It's not possible for anyone to match our product quality. So given that we have superiority of product, again, on Hellmann's, we believe it's a multi-year investment journey to build that category.
It is paying results because over two years within that span, we've already built a 10% share. So what you will see from us is a lot of incubations. And once we see certain promise, you will see multi-year investment behind few bets to make them larger rather than do many things and then try and figure out which one is working. And therefore, while we stay invested behind mayo and peanut butter, we are incubating, leveraging how channels have exploded. So be it last-mile delivery, whether it's Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, any of these bring a huge possibility for us to, rather than test inside, experiment with consumers by putting out products, see the acceptance, and then scale up. And we are doing more than a fair share of those experimentations by extending brand Knorr or Kissan into adjacent spaces.
Last but not the least, the power of our brand. I thought it'd give a good example of how it plays out. Since the two years of COVID, one of the things that really hit us hard was school closures. And we had the highest number of school closures anywhere in the world during COVID. This year, with schools coming back to normal, you've really seen brand Kissan jump, particularly as far as jams are concerned. And you can see that in one year, the index has gone back to growing over 2019. That's really the power of this brand and what it means to the mom as she packs the tiffin for a child to go to school. Moving forward into Ice Cream, a category that we're really betting big on, on three reasons. First, massive headroom in India.
You can see per capita consumption difference between where we are and where is Unilever's gold standard, which really is Turkey. Why do we believe we have the right to accelerate growth here and really strengthen our position is because we've got a portfolio that occupies magic price points, which is very critical in this category. And it also plays the entire pyramid from super premium all the way down to bottom of pyramid. And we are strengthening and learning our way through owning the seasons. And therefore, de-seasonalizing, particularly in markets where we have leadership positions. One of the things that's really benefiting us here is the macro trend as we've got last-mile delivery coming through and the ability to land Ice Cream to our home by just ordering online. It's a platform we've entered in early.
That platform is called Ice Cream Now, and it's almost 10% of our business within a span of two and a half years, which means that the category that consistently depended on out-of-home consumption also sees an opportunity to grow in home. And we're leading the agenda as far as that is concerned. The portfolio, similar to the example of Kissan jam, the strength of the portfolio is reflected in a business that really got affected for two consecutive years with COVID being in the peak of our season. This year has come back strongly. Again, it's over-indexed when you compare to 2019, which was the pre-COVID period. So that in a brief is about our tea portfolio, foods, and Ice Cream. And now invite Krish to talk about HFD.
Yeah. So we had three priorities when we took charge of this business in April 2020.
The first was really to rejuvenate, contemporize, and strengthen these iconic brands. The second was to harness the wider HUL capability, particularly in direct distribution, and expand our physical reach, also winning in channels of the future like e-commerce. And the third was to step up our investment and really grow the market and build these brands. And the evidence of that is really the stepped-up mental reach and the GRPs we've been able to put behind these categories and brands. What we see as outcomes, first of all, very high levels of volume share, indeed the highest in the last 16 years. So we've been able to grow competitively in this market.
But more importantly for us, and Tan mentioned this earlier, in a brand and a set of and a category that had really flatlined penetration in the previous four to six years, we've been able to raise penetration by over 200 basis points over the last two years. Now, central to driving that penetration growth has really been our prowess of market development. And you've heard it consistently as a big theme today. This is really the art and science of reaching millions of consumers directly through our sampling programs, educating them, and building new category habits. We sharpshoot markets where we see opportunity of under-penetration. So in my case, for instance, we really look at Southeast and Central India and small-town and rural within that. And we reached this year in HFD alone, we'd have reached about 46 million consumers directly with very high levels of conversion.
So people actually buying products from us at the end of that call. I'll show you a video for a minute about our market development program. So could I have the market development AV, please?
This is how a typical promoter activity for market development on Horlicks looks like. The brand pitch is delivered to the appropriate households. Mothers are informed about the importance of dietary diversity and balanced Nutrition for children. [Foreign language] After this, the promoter uses the Horlicks NutriMeter app to input the daily food habits of the child in the house. She informs mothers about their children's daily intake of vitamins and minerals and helps the shoppe r.
Then the app demonstrates how adding Horlicks two times a day in their meals gives them 60% of protein requirement and 70%-100% of micronutrient requirements. After demonstrating the NutriMeter app to the consumer, the promoter goes for immediate conversion by presenting the sale offer.
Yeah. I spoke about strengthening our brands. And on brand Horlicks, we've pivoted our brand to a growth outcome of taller, sharper, stronger. This is the root strength of the brand. And literally hot off the press, this ad went on air two days ago. Let me show you the latest communication on Horlicks. Can I have the Horlicks ad, please?
[Foreign language] Taller, stronger, sharper.
And I think the last part of our growth thrust is really about winning in channels and segments of the future. You all have Nutri Gummies on your table. But I want to talk to you a little bit about our adult well-being portfolio, which is a small but rapidly growing segment in the market. We are the market leaders, but it's very underdeveloped. So we're really driving market development of this segment. You would have tried Diabetes Plus earlier today morning, and I hope you liked it.
I think for us, the context of raising outcomes and driving new benefits and new segments is particularly important in the context of rising inflation, particularly food inflation, and in particular, milk inflation. Now, this puts a huge strain on the cost per cup, and we've seen consumers titrating consumption. So at this time, it's even more critical that we double down on accessible, affordable availability of our packs. So whether it be our pouch packs or our sachets, which get in more consumers and drive growth, or indeed you would have tasted our Horlicks 3-in-1, which we've just launched in Odisha, which allows consumers to get the great taste of Horlicks without milk, which is hot water, at just INR 10. Let me show you the film for Horlicks 3-in-1. Could I have the Horlicks film, please?
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
With that, let me hand you back over to Tan.
And just to bring things to a close, I think this is an area where we're learning quite a bit. While we have stated we want to make sustainable living commonplace, and you've seen a whole host of initiatives, one of the things we're trying to build muscle on is how do you reach it to the consumer? So I'm going to close with the last AV on Kissan, where you'll see the regenerative agriculture bit that we're doing on Kissan.
Now, with the new launch that is going in, the consumers have an opportunity to see the quality of the tomatoes that goes into the Kissan, which in many ways is trying to bring to consumer our efforts in raising the game on regenerative agriculture. Can we have the AV, please?
Enter the world of Kissan. The story of brand Kissan began in 1934, when trains passing through undivided Punjab would halt at a marketplace where local farmers sold freshly picked produce. This place came to be known as Kissan, now India's number one ketchup and jams brand. At Kissan, we take pride in sourcing the best quality produce directly from the farmer. We wanted to bring this distinctiveness alive for our consumers, using the farmer as our hero. We are bringing our farmer credentials alive now on our pack with the Kissan at the forefront.
To give our consumers the Kissan experience, the consumer can scan a QR code, which takes them into an augmented reality platform. This platform will enable consumers to hear real-life testimonials of Kissan. [Foreign language] Consumers can also experience the farmer life by playing farming games on the platform.
The consumer can live the farming experience by plowing the field, sowing seeds, and watering the plants till the perfect tomato plant grows, and then they must pluck the perfectly ripened tomatoes and not any others to build their scores. Then users must transport the best quality tomatoes from the farm to store them by escaping all the hurdles on the way, or they lose lives. A leaderboard will be updated every month, and the top two winners will get to visit the Sahyadri Farms and live the Kissan experience. Armed with our new pack designs, Kissan is now ready to usher in a new era of growth. The future looks promising.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm taking a leaf out of Tan's page. If that was a pre-lunch session, I think this is the graveyard pre-lunch session.
I am aware that I'm standing between you and lunch, but hopefully I'll make the session interesting enough. What I'll do today is actually talk you through about the Reimagine HUL program. A lot of you would have heard about it in various forums before, read about it in various places as well. What we'll do today is to give all of you a little bit more hands-on feel about the program, about the capabilities that we've developed, and more importantly, how it's adding to our business outcomes. How we'll do it? I'll spend about 10 minutes setting up a bit of context, talking to you through about the architecture of the program. Then post-launch, in smaller groups, you'll have an opportunity to interact with each of these ecosystems a little bit more detailed.
You'll have an opportunity to talk to the people who are actually running these programs, get a little bit more feel of some of the capabilities that we've developed. Before we get started with what's happening with HUL, it's instructive to note what are some of the vectors that have changed externally. It's been about 25 years since public internet was launched in India, and now we've got about 800 million plus internet users now, and over 90% of them are wireless users. The smartphone shipments have crossed over 700 million now. And all of this has been enabled by a dramatic drop in the data cost. It's dropped by almost 20-fold over the last few years. India is about the lowest data cost country globally. The other instructive part here is that this digitization is also being quite democratic.
You see rural consumers, rural users outstripping urban users on the avenue of digitization. You're seeing almost a 13% growth in the active users in the rural platform. What this is also leading to is that consumers are spending even more time on digital. They're spending almost 60% more time on digital than they would on the traditional media. This makes it attractive not just for consumers, for advertisers, for manufacturers, all of them to come together. And that leads to a convergence of media and digital and commerce online. The Indian government has actually been a great enabler towards this initiative. So all of us would have heard of the Digital India Initiative. So that Digital India Initiative now touches the life of almost every single Indian.
A lot of building blocks were actually set up several years ago, be it the Aadhaar program, be it the UPI, the eKYC. All of it was the foundations on which the acceleration is happening now. What this also enabled is that during the COVID disruption, the states, the various union territories were able to use these digital foundations to actually minimize the impact of COVID, actually help us recover in a far more agile manner out of this disruption. The last couple of years has been a rapid acceleration on the digital economy. India is now the second largest, fastest growing digital economy in the world. It's got the third largest user base. And from a UPI perspective, all of you may have crossed the $1 trillion mark this year for the first time. What this enables is that it's led to a creation of new business.
It's led to a creation of a new economy that didn't exist before. So the digital economy is expected to add almost $1 trillion to the Indian economy by 2025, and it will support over 60 million jobs. This is also being supported by a strong digital governance and regulatory frameworks. There's a data bill which is in the pipeline. Some of it has already been implemented. It covers the gamut across storage of data, usage of data, exchange of data, and both for organizations and for individuals. What that does is actually act as a catalyst for the startup industry. And all of you would have heard of the startup industry. I'm sure you guys cover a lot of other startups as well. We got our first unicorn in 2011. Now, one out of every 10 unicorns is born in India.
We've got over 100 unicorns, over $300 billion of collective valuation. And it's expected by about 2025, we'll have another 100+ unicorns coming into the fray as well. Now, as this is changing, so we're also seeing new business models emerge, new economic models emerge in this situation. I'll talk about a few of them in terms of how things have evolved. Let's take the eB2B landscape, for example. Three years ago, four years ago, very small, very nascent. Retailers are now able to place orders at their convenience. They no longer need to wait for somebody to come to them. So they can place the orders when they want, where they want it, and also get it delivered when they want and where they want it to be. In addition, they're able to interact with organizations. They're able to get their queries resolved.
They're able to have direct exchange of information with the organization directly without any intermediary involved. As consumers, I'm sure all of us are, we've gone a level beyond. We said, not only do I want all of this, I want it within 10-20 minutes. And that's what the Quick Commerce setup has enabled. The government has also started to make massive changes here. ONDC is a platform that is a platform-agnostic model, which obviously has a vision of getting even more users, sellers, and consumers onto the commerce platforms. Let's take another spectrum. Let's take telemedicine, for example, the health tech and the fintech. What this has done is actually brought in a lot more users into the system. Users are now able to access healthcare in a timely manner, access quality healthcare in a timely manner.
And not just has it enabled access, what it's also done is created new adjacent economic models. So be it telemedicine, be it fitness, be it e-pharma, these models didn't exist six years in the past. Similarly, in fintech, all of us are used to the UPI, used to the cashless transactions that end up happening. Not only is it exchange of financial transactions across individuals and organizations, what it also has done is brought in a lot more individuals inside the financial and inside the formal economy. And that's unlocked a whole greater potential by itself. Lastly, from an employee perspective, again, the employee landscape is changing. Employees want to work when they want to work, where they want to work. And obviously, organizations are figuring out the way around it. They've also led to a creation of new employment models.
So be it the influencer model, the micro and the nano influencer. Just for example, YouTube has over 600,000 creators working on their platform. So that's the kind of new employment generations that have happened in the last few years. As we see what's happening externally, a bit of a flavor of what it has done to FMCG per se and what's happened in our industry. We spoke about some of the shifts that have happened from a consumer and a customer ecosystem. Consumers are now no longer just buying brands, right? They want to buy experiences. They want to know not just what the product is delivering. They want to know what is happening before, what is happening after. How is the organization able to engage with me after I purchase the product? Are you telling me what the product stands for?
Am I buying a whole experience rather than just buying the product solution? Similarly, from a manufacturing perspective, the operations have changed dramatically compared to what's in the past. The logistics aggregators, for example, have completely redefined both first mile and last mile logistics. Manufacturing, for example, enabled by robotics is no longer the same as manufacturing has been in the past. Now, what all of this digitization has done is led to a creation of a humongous amount of data. Now, all of this data is with the organizations, with various players. And now, with the democratization of technology, they're now able to use this data to make sense of data. And that's what technological democratization has enabled. It's a little bit more sense-making and making sure that organizations are able to use this data to make far more informed decisions on their way forward.
Now, this chart is something that you would have seen in various forms, and this doesn't change. Our strategy remains the same as what it was several years ago. We started in the Reimagine HUL program about seven, eight years in the past. We first launched WIMI, and we broke it down into 14 consumer clusters. That's when the need for granular data arose. We needed to have granular, actionable data at our fingertips. We started off with LiveWire, which gave this ability to access data. The success that we had with LiveWire gave us the confidence that data and digital can be the front and center of how we operate. Over the last few years, we've done a variety of experiments across various ecosystems, be it with consumers, be it with the customers, be it in manufacturing. We've done various experiments.
We've then brought it together under the single umbrella, under the Reimagine HUL program. We also constituted, under the leadership of Sanjiv, the Digital Council, which helps bring all these experiments together inside an integrated program across the consumer, customer, and operations system. What we've done is the success of experimentation and the success that we've had with digitizing our processes is now enabling us to take a step forward into a journey, into redefining our consumer experiences. So we are not just digitizing a process, but using digitization to say, how do we redefine our consumer experiences? How do we redefine our touchpoints? And that is what you will see today. It's not just the capabilities, but how are the capabilities making a difference to the end user in various forms?
The capabilities that we've developed, and you'll get a sense of them today, needs to cater to two different worlds. We spoke about urbanization. We spoke about rural. The same holds true for our business models as well. We need to have capabilities that cater to the large, make sure that we have scale, make sure that we have the efficiencies, make sure that we're able to leverage data for greater decision-making here. At the same time, we also need to ensure that our systems and processes are agile enough. They need to be nimble enough. They need to be responsive enough. Both of them need to talk to each other.
So the modular capabilities that we develop need to ensure that we leverage these synergies across both of these ecosystems and end up delivering both scale and efficiency for the large and nimbleness and agility for the small. And this is the crux of how we are operating under the Reimagine HUL program. What we have is a program which is a little bit more holistic as consumers have moved from a linear approach to a non-linear approach. Our program also is a non-linear approach towards consumer, customer operations embedded with data tech and analytics. From a consumer perspective, what we're focusing on is giving the right products and experiences seamlessly to the consumer on time and in full. From the customer perspective, ensuring that we are redefining the customer experience across various touchpoints that he has both with the organization and with elsewhere.
And obviously, ensuring that as we do this, our manufacturing has to be, our operations has to be agile and robust enough to cater to these average needs. And all of this embedded with data tech and analytics, supporting our decision-making, enabling faster, better, and more quality of decision-making coming in. So this is the crux of how we are operating with the Intelligent Enterprise program. And what we will do now is we will break for lunch. So a quick few admin announcements here. Lunch will be served. The first floor just down here is where you will have lunch. Post-lunch, you will be broken down into four groups. You have the group names with you as you would have walked in your entry. In case you've forgotten your group names, the color of your lanyard, green, yellow, black, helps indicate the group that you belong to.
After lunch, you guys will break down into four groups, go to 99 East, which is just next door, and then have a chance to interact with the four different ecosystems. It is a round-robin place, so about 15 minutes in each. So consumer, customer, operations, and with data, all of you will have a chance to have that engagement. And then we come back here at 3:15 P.M. sharp. Again, a quick announcement for the people who dialed in virtually. We will join back with you at 3:30 P.M. We have uploaded the program details on the site. So feel free to download and read it at your convenience. And you can join us back at 3:30 P.M. For the people in the room, we can break for lunch, and we'll come back here at 3:15 P.M. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to the post-lunch session.
Hope you guys had a good lunch. I hope you guys had a chance to interact with each of the verticals as well. Judging by the questions that came our way, I hope you guys got a greater sense of the capabilities that we've developed. You guys were able to get a better feel for something that we've been speaking about for some time now. What I'll do now is just put a bit of perspective on the things that we've pulled together, give you a bit of context on what we're attempting to do and how we are moving it forward, also give you a sense of the overall scale of what we've achieved. In summary, what you've seen today, so digital is no longer a byword with us, right? It's part and parcel of how we operate.
It's deeply embedded in our ways of operation. Just to give you an overall perspective, so we moved from digitization to digitalization to redefining our consumer experiences, so if you see, for example, Shikhar, the retailer is able to place an order seamlessly. He's able to place an order at his convenience, but more importantly, along with Samadhan coming together, you're able to ensure that you give him the next-day fulfillment commitment, and both of these coming together actually redefines the experience for the retailer overall. Similarly, from a consumer perspective, you guys would have seen how, let's say, with Athena, we've been able to identify the insights, and similarly, with the Agile Innovation Hub, we are able to design, we're able to put prototypes on it. We're able to actually test with our consumers in double-quick time.
And finally, with our Agile Digital Nano Factories, landed with consumers in days rather than months. And lastly, from an internal perspective, if you look at our marketers, if you look at our decision-makers within the organization, they have the tools that they need, whether it be with the consumer experience capabilities that we've developed, whether it's the commerce capabilities that we've developed between D2C, live commerce, et cetera. And all of it enabled by data-backed decisions. You would have seen with LiveWire and Chanakya bringing to the fore, enabling better data and decision-making by the internal marketers. As we go on this journey, we're also on another parallel journey of ensuring that we upskill and get the right skilling done of our talent and our people here. There's a three-pronged approach that we use. First is to ensure that we acquire the right skill sets.
The way we do it is we work with industry partners. We partner with educational institutions. We're actually part of the curriculum in some form where we work on creating projects, live projects, internships along with the individuals so that we have a ready pool of talent to dip into. In parallel, we also have internal accelerators working on the key capabilities that we need across the value chain. Lastly, as we do with our talent, we also have a strong external partnership system. We're working with various startups, various accelerators, research institutions. Let's just keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on outside, and we bring in the best of what we do outside internally into HUL. Lastly, as we do this, this is enabled by an agile organizational culture. We have centers of excellence.
You guys would have met various teams across sales, supply chain, et cetera. So we have centers of excellence coming in. That partnering with our BUs and with our categories also brings in the best of marketing and our capabilities across media, CMI, UniOps, brings in the best of what we have across the organization into an agile unit with the Digital Council, which not only brings together one holistic umbrella of experimentation coming in, but also reimagines the possibilities for the future. In summary, digital is no longer a byword. It's pretty much part and parcel of what we do. It's deeply embedded in our ways of working, and just to give you guys a snapshot of the kind of scale that digital has achieved for us, you'd have seen with Shikhar, we cover over a million stores. We also have 25% of our demand being captured digitally.
We've got 14 D2C platforms coming in. Our 25% of our spends also go on the digital side. We've got the first FMCG factory, which has got the Digital Lighthouse Award. We produce over 200 SKUs across six Nano Factories here. And we've got 50% Design for Channel portfolio. All of this generates about 60 petabytes of data. And we do this with zero control deficiencies. So in summary, this is where we have the Intelligent Enterprise program, where we are not just being ready for the future, but we are creating the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Arun. Good. So now I will do the last session of the day. And I think the day has been outstanding and fabulous.
Of course, our team has done a great job, but the quality of engagement that I've seen across the day from all of you has really made our day very special. So super thanks for the energy that you've given to us. What I will now do in the last session is to try to cover, of course, the financials that we look forward to going forward and try to summarize what you heard from all my colleagues. You heard the biggest conversation first, which is the India story. India with less than $50 per capita consumption, with HUL in more than 85% categories that we deal in, we are market leaders. We have a strong right to win, and our clear and compelling strategy, our talent, our brands, and our leadership position put together, we have a long runway of growth ahead of us.
You heard as part of the strategy for each of the divisions when Madhu spoke, when Deepak spoke, when Tan spoke, consistently market development, driving the portfolio more premium is at the cornerstone of our consumer-led growth strategy. Last but not least, we want to lead disruption, which is the reason why we spend a lot of time in talking about our Reimagine HUL journey. You saw a bit consumer ecosystem, customer, operations, all of our data strategy in each of those spaces, we want to ensure that we lead. We sell today directly in two million outlets across the country. We want to ensure that that area we remain with our strength, and which is why in almost half of them, a million outlets you heard from Kedar, we have today our sales getting captured digitally through Shikhar.
So that's what I mean that we want to lead disruption wherever it happens first. Talking ahead, there are two things I will cover today. Talking about near-term where we are, we all know the market context we are dealing with. And you also know how, as HUL, we have navigated very successfully the last six to eight quarters of high inflation, high volatility, and we managed to do competitive growth and also ensure that our margins remain in a very healthy range. Then after that, I will talk about long-term value creation model. Here, you will not see any surprise. Similar time last year when we had our Capital Markets Day, we spoke about our next decade of value creation model. Very similar is what you will hear articulation from me today.
Talking about the near-term, in terms of the context, you heard from us quarter after quarter consistently that we are in a period of extreme high inflation and very high amount of volatility. When you see on the left-hand side of the chart, when I look at the range of last 10 years where the key commodities that impact our business are, they are decadal highs. The only commodity within that which is meaningfully corrected is palm oil. But when I look at year-on-year total impact of all other commodities put together, it is still substantial. And on top of that, we know what's happening with U.S. dollar strengthening. In the last 12 months alone, we have seen upwards of 10% impact coming in. Either items today are imported in the country or there is international port parity at which commodities are traded.
And hence, there's always an impact of currency which impacts material cost, even if these are bought locally. And the impact of that high commodity is very clearly seen in a subdued FMCG market. Mid-single-digit FMCG market growth is something which is acceptable. But what you see a more pronounced impact is on the volume which sits behind the mid-single-digit FMCG market growth, which is today negative. And within that, rural always had a job of being accretive to overall growth of FMCG. And you see rural is near flat at this point in time with a more pronounced impact on inflation, which is impacting the volumes in that space. Sanjiv spoke about the average FMCG consumption just below $50. And if you split that up between rural and urban, we know rural is just below $30.
And it's that segment of the population, that income levels in those parts of the country where inflation is hurting the most. And you can see the impact of that in the FMCG market. And if I see in this context what we have done, very clearly three focus areas for us for the last several quarters in this volatile atmosphere. It starts with pricing. When you end up having a 22% net material inflation impacting at a total level, you have to concentrate and do a good job in pricing. And I will speak a little more about the way we go around driving Net Revenue Management in our business. Second is our strong reflex muscles of driving savings, savings across lines of the P&L. The leaders you saw today will lead savings tonalities left from top.
But the entire organization participates in driving our savings agenda across all lines of the P&L. And last but not least, all the savings that we drive today is in service of growth because we want to invest behind our brands. We want to invest behind our business model to drive growth. Let me click down on each of these, starting with pricing. If you see on the left-hand side, top right, it all starts with strategic pricing. The strength of the brands that we have, the leadership position that we command in more than 85% of the portfolio, we lead pricing. And that's how we end up ensuring that when there's a big job to be done with inflation, we lead pricing. But it's not a simple job of just taking price increases. It is no longer something that is an art.
We have converted pricing into a very deep science. It starts with the pack price architecture. We know that different price points have different tension levels of pricing ability, and that's what goes into deciding what's the state that you want with our price architecture. After that, clear job to be done in terms of driving mix. There are, of course, parts of the portfolio which make better margin compared to the part of the portfolio. In times like this, we do ensure that we focus a lot in driving mix of the portfolio, and that's our lever again that helps us to drive overall price table. Design for channel. Today, with all the disruptions happening in channel, we know the future group of channels. If I add modern trade, e-commerce, eB2B all put together, I call that as future of channel.
And our portfolio that we sell today in this part of the business is very different than what we sell in general trade. Overall, our mix, our portfolio is margin accretive when it comes to channel of the future. Today, our market share and our margins are accretive in the channels of the future. And equally, the amount of job that we do in terms of driving our trade promotions. We have a very strong discipline. Before we put a trade promotion, there's a very clear objective written as to what's the expectation in terms of incremental volume. And once the promotion is delivered, we also go back and check how have we performed against our expectation. And there's a very clear red, green, amber which gets written down. And that learning gets recycled time after time, cycle after cycle across category.
Hence, we keep getting better at generating ROI from our investments in trade. Last but not least, what you see the word written Jarvis there, it's an in-house tool, in-house capability that we have developed. When you look at the 6P, when you look at market context, when you look at overall understanding of what's happening in the consumer space, we run various scenarios of what would a pricing decision look like so that we're able to take bias out of the judgment and then decide what's the right price we could go with, which will give us the maximum chance of driving volume and ensuring that the consumer price value equation is still kept intact. That's the level of sophistication that goes using a multi-weighted forecast and capability that we do in Jarvis. The result of that is what you see on the right-hand side.
More than 2,000 pricing networks. To land a pricing network from R&D to supply chain to marketing to finance to CD. Everybody's involved. And in the last 12 months' time, we landed more than 2,000 networks. And this is where what you heard from Kedar, the execution prowess that we have in the front end with our CD system, it really comes to big help where we are able to execute what we decide at speed in the marketplace. And of course, resultant of that, a typical 3%-4% average price increase in the past years is what we had to take as high as 12% in the last couple of quarters. Moving ahead to the second area, which I wanted to speak about is Symphony. As I mentioned, this is what tonality for driving is what we lead from top.
The thinking is end-to-end across all lines of the P&L, but we ensure that the entire organization with their ideas crowdsourced come together to generate what we think we should do next in terms of driving savings. That's extremely critical for us. And once we have decided what are the next ideas we'll bank upon, a very clear job in terms of executing that at scale. And this is how we end up driving. On the right-hand side, what you see on the chart is the benchmark that we have today. If I look at overhead cost, employee cost, and other expenses put together, we are leading industry benchmarks in that place. And this is nothing but the outcome of driving year after year and our strong muscles of savings, as I called out.
All this put together today, we do generate more than 7% of our turnover as savings. Of course, these savings is what ultimately funds product superiority. This is what funds our market development and investment that we do in the business. This is also that helps us to ensure that when there's a challenge of inflation, to a large extent, we want to mitigate before we end up taking a pricing call on our portfolio. To the third lever, as I mentioned, the entire job that we do of generating savings is all in service of growth. Hence, investing behind our brand is a super focus area for us. Consistent communication across multiple years, purposeful brands is what really helps us to ensure we're able to bring together our portfolio in the marketplace.
Our brands, our campaigns have earned multiple awards, as you can see on the chart out here, and our brands continue to feature always in the top across various parameters and various benchmarks and results which we end up seeing. Moving ahead, if I look at all that I spoke about in the last four to six quarters, which very tough atmosphere, our results speak what we have delivered, which is 4G growth. Growth that is consistent, competitive, profitable, and responsible. We have grown ahead of the market, significantly ahead of the market, which is why today our market shares that we have gained is highest in more than a decade. Our growth has been consistent quarter after quarter, very strong growth ahead of the market.
Equally, the kind of value creation we have done with our managing our EBITDA in a very healthy range is what you see the impact of that on our earnings. And this earnings has withstood time of inflation. It has withstood time of volatility. And at the same time as we've done that, we have not shied away from investing. And as we have delivered a profitable growth, very clear focus for us to ensure that the growth is also responsible. As Sanjiv called out, sustainability sits at the absolute heart of our business model. And you can see a couple of leading ratings where we top the charts because of the work that we do across our portfolio on ESG.
Our last annual report and what Sanjiv captured today captures the commitment that we have as business, be it climate, be it social, or be it other areas of impact in the society. And if I talk about our near-term focus looking ahead, when the environment in our mind will remain challenging, we do have continuous volatility. There is still a huge amount of inflation. In the last quarter, we spoke about 22% inflation. Net material inflation is what we had seen in our portfolio. Based on that, we had taken a 12% price increase. So hence a substantial 10% gap of price versus cost. And this gap of price versus cost, of course, has become larger as commodity costs have increased. But our job is very clear. A, we are focused to ensure that we keep increasing our consumer franchise and protect our business model.
It always starts with driving growth ahead of the market. Our ambition always is to ensure that more than 75% of our business gains market share. In near term, the job that we have is to build back gross margin. The entire price versus cost equation I spoke about has impacted gross margin where you can see almost 500-600 basis points of impact on our gross margin. This is our focus. The focus will start by keep doing the job of driving savings and, as appropriate, take price increases to build back gross margin. As we build back the gross margin, we will continue to invest. We do expect that media hit will go up.
As media spend will go up, we will lean in and continue to invest in our brands with a very simple principle that the share of voice, as Sanjiv called out, has to be ahead of share of market. If I talk about our model going forward long-term, as I mentioned, there is no surprise out here. It's very similar to what I had shared same time last year. Our last one decade of performance, Sanjiv summarized, we have shown that it doesn't matter the times are of inflation, times are of deflation, or this extreme volatility. Our business model is very strong, and it has delivered consistent growth, be it a growth of 9% CAGR driven by a very strong 5% volume, and we had a job to be done in last decade on margin, which is why a lot of focus went in terms of margin improvement.
We added 1,000 basis points of EBITDA margin in last decade. Having added that, today we are placed at a very healthy EBITDA range, the range that we like. EPS growth in the same period and cash generation has been very robust at a strong double digit. We have cumulatively last decade more than INR 55,000 crore of dividend is what we have declared and given to our shareholders. That's the track record that we have of performance. Our financial growth model, if I summarize on a page, it's a growth-led financial growth model where growth ahead of the market is our first job to be done. Profit. Today, as I mentioned, we have a pretty healthy EBITDA. Going forward, what we expect to do is modest margin expansion from here on. Last but not least, our capital velocity.
We are disciplined the way we invest capital in the business, and that keeps generating more efficiency. Added all three put together, we are very confident of delivering double-digit EPS growth for years to come, and if I click down on each of these three key levers of growth, profit, and capital and talk a little bit more, what's the growth algorithm? Of course, it always starts with consumer. All of our growth models are consumer-focused and consumer-driven, and it starts with the core, as Madhu called out at length during the BPC presentation. Driving the core through product superiority, driving the core, as Tan called out, by driving communication, which are top right, and this is what helps us to keep bringing innovation and keep driving the core.
The second part of the strategy, again, which you very consistently heard across all the three-division presentation, is market development and making the portfolio more premium. Today, Sanjiv called out INR 10,000 crore. Our market development portfolio is the size of INR 10,000 crore, 20% of the business. Premium portfolio, as we called out, almost 33% of the business is premium portfolio, which is more than 120 price index. That part of the portfolio as part of the growth algorithm has to grow at twice the pace compared to core. This is what sits at the heart of our growth model. And last but not least, our approach on M&A is a prudent approach. We seek value. We seek capabilities which are complementary. We ensure that we enter into spaces which are future growth spaces. And those are some attributes you have seen whenever we have done any M&A, any bolt-on.
Those are the attributes which always are there. And of course, ultimately, timing is also essential so that we are able to get a deal, if at all, at a very right value equation from where we are convinced that we can generate and create more value for all of our stakeholders and shareholders. If I talk about pricing, it's very clear. There are two strong levers going ahead for modest margin expansion. It will start with making the portfolio more premium, and hence the mix will improve. The chart which Deepak spoke about, where there was a time where we had 58% of our laundry business, which was sitting at mass. Today, an equal almost portfolio sits at premium end. That's the level of change which has happened. Haircare, very similar. Launching Dove 15 years ago, launching TRESemmé some years ago.
These are large brands that we run in our hair portfolio today. So the job of making the portfolio premium is what will be kicker for a margin. The second job to be done always is to ensure that we keep growing. And as we keep growing ahead of the market, we will get leverage in the P&L. And you saw that today we are already at industry benchmark as far as employee cost and other operating costs are concerned. And we do expect to keep generating leverage. And these are two strong levers using which we are confident that we'll keep progressing on margin expansion in a modest way. Coming to capital discipline, we today spent 2% of our turnover as CapEx.
This is very similar to what we also have depreciation charge in our P&L, which almost means we're able to fund our CapEx through our accrual in the P&L. When it comes to working capital, negative 22 days, we maintain a very strong disciplined working capital rhythm in the business. Last but not least, this is what really helps us to ensure we are able to deliver a very strong upwards of 100% return on capital employed. If I give a little more flavor on our capital allocation principle, it's absolutely the job to be done out here is to support our growth algorithm, and which is why investing in brands, investing in capabilities is something which is extremely top of the agenda. Last financial year, financial year 2021-22, we had more than INR 900 crore of incremental turnover from innovations that we drove in the business.
And hence, a large portion of the investment goes into brands and building capability. When it comes to capability, we have a culture of experimentation. There are experiments which are successful, and because of that, we are able to scale them up. Shikhar is a classic example of what we are scaling it up. Samadhan going forward will be another example that we want to scale up. A company which sells millions in millions of tons product. We have factories that are producing kgs, and we call them the Nano Factories you heard Yogesh talking about it. So those capabilities is what we really invest our time and energy into. Of course, there are times where experimentation don't go right and they fail. We are very clear that when it fails, we fail fast and we move on to the next big idea.
Coming to the next element of M&A, I mentioned the focus out here is very clearly into future growth spaces. We will keep looking for opportunities where we can do bolt-on acquisitions, but in spaces that we're interested, and with this very simple algorithm, as I mentioned earlier, it has to bring complementary capability. It has to be the right timing at which we enter, and we should be confident of creating more value after acquiring the asset. But we will not shy away from making that investment whenever it demands. Last but not least, our principle of returning cash back to shareholders. We maintain more than 90% of dividend payout ratio, and as you saw, INR 55,000 crore is the amount of dividend we declared in the last one decade, and we will ensure that the steady stream of dividend continues with our commitment to drive double-digit EPS growth.
So, if I now may summarize as to what you heard at length from us, very clear and compelling strategy we have to ensure that Hindustan Unilever keeps growing and keeps delivering on 4G growth, and that strategy is absolutely rooted and strong right to win. That right to win is because of the brands that we have, which are strong, the leadership position that we have, and the talent that we have in the business, and as I mentioned, we have proven our business model in inflationary times, in deflationary times, and in volatile times, and that's the financial growth model which has stood the time and test, and last but not least, the track record of consistent outperformance, and this is what we are committed to.
And I hope the presentations today, the engagements today gave you the confidence that our business and our business model is poised to keep delivering strong outperformance in the market. With that, I close all the presentations that we had. And we have a good amount of time we have dedicated for questions in the room, and also questions which we have online, which many of you attending online have submitted. So we'll now move to the next Q&A round. Ravi, over to you.
Can I request the Management Committee members to join on the stage for the Q&A, please? All right. So what I'll do is I'll pick up some of the questions which have come on the web and are repeated. And we'll also have an opportunity to ask questions in the room. If I can start with you, Ritesh, a question on the GSK OTC arrangement and why did we exit the arrangement two years before the planned contract date? And what is the margin impact of that?
Thank you, so as you know, that we have today a contract in place with GSK to distribute the OTC products in India. And this was a five-year contract. We are almost two and a half years in the contract. As GSK, Haleon now globally, they are revisiting their model in the country, and they do wish to set up their own infrastructure in India. And they've requested us for a 12-month period. They want our support to continue. And hence, we have agreed mutually to ensure that we are able to transition over the next 12 months the capabilities where they will set up their own infrastructure in the country. Now, what's the impact of this? Today, we generate roughly INR 300 crore worth of revenue from these operations. And these numbers are also there in our results as well.
And this is the impact which we will have at a gross level in the business. But of course, there's also an amount of resources today that we spend to deliver this capability, to deliver this service while selling and distributing the products of GSK. So of course, that cost will end up saving in the system. And there will be a net cost headwind from this coming in. But in my mind, it is no different than any other headwind. It could be LAB, it could be Rupee depreciation, it could be vegetable oil going up and down. So there are various headwinds in the business. And what I spent some time in talking about earlier, that our ability, our strong reflex muscles to drive savings is what we continue to do.
We are confident of doing what I mentioned earlier there, which is to ensure that our EBITDA margins remain in a healthy range. We are able to do modest margin expansion. That job does not change. Variables, of course, will be more than one, which will impact us. Some will be positive in terms of giving us a tailwind. Some might not be as positive. We'll end up giving us headwind. We are confident of navigating the P&L.
Thank you, Ritesh. Sanjiv, question on near-term environment and when do we expect the rural demand to improve?
Yeah. You know, a lot will depend on how inflation cools down. And this is, as all of you know, is not a homegrown inflation. This is not a structural demand-led inflation, but the volatility has come in from external factors, COVID-linked and geopolitical. So I think we'll need a trigger for commodity prices to cool down. And once the commodity prices cool down, then we should start seeing companies like ours will, of course, look at the price-value equation just like we have done in skin cleansing. And then we expect the volumes to come back. The good news, however, is that despite the high inflation, the headline growth in the country for FMCG is still intact. That hasn't disappeared. That in many ways reflects the resilience of the Indian economy.
Thanks, Sanjiv. So let's take a question from the room, Abneesh. If you could state your name and the organization for the benefit of others, please.
Yeah, thanks. Abneesh from Nuvama. I have three questions. First is on your two key businesses. Will it be fair to say that the Home Care business is easier to run? Because when I see the numbers, 7x profit growth in home versus, say, 2.2x growth in BPC. Is it because in BPC, startup D2C have come more competition is there, or the ad spends have gone up? Or in Home Care, essentially it's a two-player market, or say it's a mature category, so premiumization towards liquids is available, while in BPC it's not there. And in the next five years, could this reverse?
Okay. Now, let me give you a different perspective. The reason why the margins were very low in Home Care was because of the competitive intensity in the market. That is the reason why the margins were very low. But what we have done is by transforming the portfolio, we have transformed the margins in the category. Yeah? And Home Care, and also look at it, this has not happened by accident. The market development, the premiumization has been a very clear strategy of ours. And Home Care, what we have transformed in the last 10 years is a remarkable achievement. This is not something you have seen in other markets. And that is the reason why we have the largest Home Care business in the world today for Unilever, and it is the most profitable business.
So it is because of our competitiveness that we have been able to transform. At the other end, our BPC business has been the most profitable business in our portfolio. Now, at that margin level, you cannot expect the profits to go up the way it has done in Home Care. So structurally, they are very different businesses. And BPC also, we must remember, is a very fragmented business. Here, you need to look at the strength of a portfolio through relative market share. And our RMS of four, if you... I would really urge you to take a look at all the big countries. The largest player, what is their RMS? Our RMS of four is perhaps, again, one of the best in the world in a fragmented category. So I would say they are different businesses. Both are very attractive businesses. Both have headroom to grow.
Today, we are on a much stronger note than we were ever before.
Sanjiv, one follow-up on that. When I see your market share gain in, say, Home Care, it's very strong, 500 basis points. Do you also measure on an overall basis BPC market share because it's very diversified?
Yes. You know, we are gaining market shares this year as well in BPC. We do it on an overall basis. But because they are so different categories, we don't merge it together to talk about it. But look at hair care. Yeah? As Madhu and Harman shared with you, it is perhaps in one of the most competitive categories, one of the biggest share gains that we have seen. If you look at our pillars, Abneesh, we have spoken about Home Care. I've spoken about BPC and the kind of gains we have got. Similarly, if you look at our Foods & Refreshment, the kind of gains we have seen in our tea category and the way we have taken leadership and spread the difference between us and our arch rivals is, again, something which we are very proud of.
So our gains have come from a large quantum of enhancing the competitiveness in our business.
Sanjiv, just last one follow-up, which will, I think, complete this whole thing. When I see your Home Care sales growth over the last 10 years, it is 2.6x, and your BPC last 10 years is 1.8x. So if I ignore the margin construct on sales, is it because inflation and detergent has been higher? Is that the main reason?
See, one is, of course, if we look at the Home Care business, one of your key raw material is petroleum-based derivatives. So they got seriously impacted. And we had to take, but our capacity to take the price increase in Home Care was because our brands are so strong. And despite the price increase, we have also had volume growth in Home Care. Yeah? Whereas in BPC, because the construct is very different, and there was a period of time when we had lost competitiveness in skin cleansing. That we have now regained.
Right. My second question is on the point which you just made on the tea. Eight years back, you were a number two player, and now you have become a strong number one. Is it happening because Winning in Many Indias is helping, or the kind of premiumization benefit you have seen in detergent that's happening in tea also?
See, it has happened because not just of one isolated thing. It is because of Winning in Many Indias. It is about market development, natural care, green tea, etc. And a lot of our emphasis on market development is that the margin should be accreted to our portfolio. So it lends itself to premiumization in a very natural way. And just like in Home Care, he talked about, there's still a huge market in the mass. Similarly, there is a huge market of loose tea in the tea business, which our whole job is to convert them into packaged tea and then upgrade them.
Last quick question on GSK. You have come out with this INR 10 product which says that milk is added already. And you have said in the past that milk prices have gone up so much that there is a consumer behavior that already in milk I'm paying so much. So does this product solve that inflation issue which consumer faces on an overall basis? And five years down the line, how do you see the GSK portfolio? Because now three years have already panned out, and there have been a lot of challenges in the macroeconomic. But do you think that the GSK portfolio five years down the line will be more of, say, gummies, more of, say, the diabetes from a shift perspective?
Yeah. I'll also bring in Tan here to answer on the new mix that we have launched. But you know, what did we acquire this business for? We acquired this business for certain very clear fundamental reasons. Low penetration. The second is, while as Indians, we consume the gross calories, we are significantly deficient when it comes to minerals, vitamins, and micronutrients. And our ability to scale up distribution and our ability to bring in new formats, new mixes, and premiumize the portfolio. Those were based on. And of course, the financial was also based on how do we leverage the cost and bring in cost synergies. So, cost synergy, we are far ahead of the plan, and we have generated cash more than was built in the business plan. Yeah? The fundamentals haven't changed.
The context got a bit disrupted because of COVID, because of inflation, because of discretionary items. But from a long-term perspective, health remains one of the biggest concerns of individuals. And our ability to impact a billion lives hasn't changed. So the attractiveness of this portfolio is completely intact. And then we are bringing in more high science into it. If you look at our plus range, yeah, women, whether you're looking at diabetes, these are all women's health, yeah, mothers. These are all, again, very clear thrust areas for us to premiumize the portfolio. So I am very optimistic about this. And I'm not at all fazed if we have not got the kind of growth I would have loved to got in the first couple of years. We will get there. We know highly penetrated categories how to get growth.
Why won't we get growth in categories which are penetrated just 25%? On this innovation, let Tan give you the insights.
Yeah. Two parts, Abneesh. Both ends, we see opportunity to grow. One is condition awareness, and therefore more people, India has got a lot of pre-diabetic, and therefore there is that once people get aware, they'll consume. But equally, the category penetration itself is very low, especially when you look at rural, it's even lower. And therefore, we see both these growing and not one disproportionately at the cost of the other. Specifically on the INR 10, Abneesh, the way we've designed it, like Sanjiv said, the big issue in the country is micronutrient deficiency. So the product design is such that the micronutrients between this and when you have the product mixed with milk is identical. And the rest of it is the magic that the R&D teams have done to ensure that it doesn't come at diluted margin. So that's really where it is.
The construct of the ready-to-mix drink is very different from the way we construct the classic malt or Horlicks because the starting point was we'll solve for micronutrient deficiency, and therefore, from there is how the product has been built up, and therefore, that's brought in a lens of affordability.
Thanks. Thanks, Tan. We could probably take one more question at the back, please. Can you pass a different mic? I don't think it's working.
Hello.
The mic there is not working.
Hello. Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Myself, Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum Broking. A very impressive presentation, Sanjiv. Got to know last three years you have been saying about digital advancement. Very impressive presentation from Meenakshi and what I understood that there is a lot of work which is happening at the back end. Just one question there. If I use Jarvis as an example, to what percentage of decision-making happens through the Jarvis tool? And to what level of management hierarchy it has been explicitly practiced?
Yeah. You know, I think Jarvis is now continuously on. At every stage, all our categories use it to optimize. It is no longer treated as a project to get into Jarvis. Yeah? So we are constantly optimizing and looking at it, what should be the mix of the different variables that we play. And this is not restricted at all at the senior level. The brand managers and the category teams, they are the people who use it on a day-to-day basis. But let me give it to my division heads who would be able to give you a bit more insight. Captain?
Yeah, so it is completely run by the category teams. A recent example that I can think of is we were looking at a particular instance of the price elasticity. What will be the response to volumes if you were to change price at a very specific cluster level? So that's a small example of the kind of actionability that we bring into decision-making run at a category brand level.
Yeah. Hi. Not really very different. It is always on. And we also then have specific ad hoc projects also that we can layer on top of it based on topicality. So always on. And we have the ability to do specific queries also.
Just one follow-up for Ritesh. Out of 7% saving, if you could quantify, I mean, not the percentage number, but a large saving is coming through the digital and the practice what we are implementing?
Yeah. So the 7% savings which I spoke about, this is across all lines of the P&L. This is savings in procurement when we end up buying better. We end up using scale of Unilever to procure materials that we use in the business. This includes savings from non-material supply chain costs. So what Yogesh spoke about, the work which happens in factory. This includes interventions like Bolt, which you had in one of my presentations. When we buy smart, where we operate very efficiently, we load more and we travel less. So we have ensured that through Nakshatra network, overall distances have got optimized, amount of kilometers a particular product travels before a consumer ends up having in consumer's hand. So that framework goes into driving non-material supply chain cost. Saving goes in the lines of even A&M, the material advertising sales promotion.
There, the kind of job we do in terms of driving ROAS is where, again, we end up generating savings. Savings happens in the lines of overhead as well, where we are very tight and very frugal with our mindset as to where we want to invest and where we don't want to invest. Savings happens in the line of TTS as well, the promotions that I spoke about, the way we drive ROI. So this is a 7% savings which is across all the lines of the P&L.
That's helpful. Just last question on the Horlicks. Having worked in the industry, one million samples, 10 million contacts is a very impressive number. If I strip off South and East, where we had actual weakness in West and the North, can we be able to share some number in terms of sampling, connect, and the conversion?
Okay. Specifics, I'm afraid I won't be able to share, but I can give you a broad direction. The philosophy on Horlicks is in markets where we've got stronger positions, there we want to get deeper because the awareness of the brand is high, and therefore the conversion ability is higher. So when you look at the scale of sampling that Krishnan spoke about, predominantly it is in the East and the South. So it is skewed because our brand strength is much higher there. I think conversion, I leave it at it's amongst our best in class conversion, and therefore our commitment to spend so much on it.
Thank you. Thank you, Sanjiv.
Vivek, on the right, please. Can you pass a mic there on the right?
Thank you. A couple of questions. So first, two parts, Sanjiv. One is, you know, calendar 2022, we have seen, let's say, reasonable declines in FMCG sector. And at an industry level, you have outperformed. But doesn't that concern you as a leader or, you know, from an industry standpoint, we have seen this kind of decline when per caps are so low, rural, you know, is even lower, despite which? And in that context, the second part of the question is if base is low, does that make for a strong recovery as and when inflation settles the next year?
Yeah. You know, sitting on the Unilever Executive Board, I've got a good visibility to what is happening across the world. And the volume dip is not just in the developing markets. It is also happening in the developed markets. Yeah? Because you must understand that while the average per capita income would be very high, there are still large sections of population who are cash-strapped. And inflation is not just in our commodities. Yeah? The food prices are going up, electricity is going up, gas is going up. So at the end of the day, it is having a huge impact on their wallet. So that is where they titrate the volumes. And we are seeing the impact on volumes across. If you look at the global companies, everyone, the growth is essentially price-led with impact on volumes.
And there are many places where even the headline growth is being impaired. And that's the reason I said that it is pretty heartening that at least the headline value growth in India, despite our challenges, is still intact. We are still growing the value growth in the market by 6%, 7%. And you're absolutely right. I would like the market growth to be much higher. Yeah? And that is really the sustainability of the growth model, that the market also grows. That's the reason we always talk about the India story before we talk about the HUL story. But these are unprecedented inflationary times. And I'm very clear that once the inflation cools down, and just like our imperative, Vivek is that we have to ensure that the consumer franchise is with us and a business model is protected.
Similarly, the imperative for the government is how do you contain the inflation and still grow the economy? And that's the reason if we can grow at around 7%, and if we can contain the inflation around 7%, 7% is the magical number this year. If we can do it, then we can all be very proud of how India has navigated this storm. And I'm very confident that once the commodity prices cool, the volumes will come back.
Sure. And a related question, you know, from a, how should I put it? Let's say a lot of managements post the second quarter call have indicated that they are hopeful on a second-half recovery. Is that just a hope right now, or there is anything we are halfway into this quarter? Has anything changed, you know, or it's just a hope that industry is?
You know, I wouldn't like to comment on others, but I'll give you our perspective that yes, we have seen some cooling off on palm prices. But even after cooling off in recent weeks, we have seen it has again climbed by about 10%-15%. So the volatility hasn't gone away. And then the other bit is look at the exchange rates. Yeah? That is again with the U.S. Fed hiking up the rates. If you don't hike up the rates yourself, then you'll get hammered on the currency. Yeah? So despite that, dollar is firming up. That is having an impact. And most of the commodities that we buy are either dollar denominated or they are imported into the country, which is again based on dollar purchase price. So the volatility hasn't gone away. So we remain a bit circumspect.
But the only thing that we are looking at is that we are not sequentially. It doesn't look like it will worsen.
Got it. Two more questions. The second question is around the size. So Unilever, you know, INR 55,000 crore top line, all that is great and size has its advantage. But do you also think, Sanjiv, size has a disadvantage in terms of if you want to grow 12%, let's say, 12% being a, you know, magical number, that means INR 6,000 crores of revenues you need to add, you know, every year? Do you think size has a negative implication also?
See, it is. Let me reframe the question. If your question is that does a big size mean that we will naturally win? No. The big doesn't beat the small. It is the fast that beats the slow. And that is the reason we have brought in a huge amount of agility in our business. Yeah? You would have seen our Agile Innovation Hub. What we used to take historically 18 months, now we can do it in a few months. Yeah? The speed that we have brought into our supply chain is of a different order altogether. You know, we measure something. I don't think. I don't know whether Yogesh and his team has talked about or not, Days Before Next Run. That talks about the inherent flexibility. Days Before Next Run for us is now under three, which is the best in class Unilever globally.
That again talks about the underlying agility in the supply chain. So I think if we remain fleet-footed, we may be big, but so long as the soul is of a small company, I remain very confident of delivering the growth.
Sure. And last question, Sanjiv. You know, you have done exceptionally well on the premiumization. Your market shares are high. If I take an example of, let's say, laundry, let's say I think premium is about 2.5x market share if Wheel is X. But you know, the other way of looking at it is, should you be focused, so margin as an analyst, I'm happy you have gained 10 percentage points and so on and so forth. But is there a case to actually focus on mass? Because your margins may go down, but dollar or rupee profit goes up because of this. How do you think about that?
You know, very valid question. First, Vivek is we are not vacating the mass market at all. And that's the reason we never talk about brand growth stories. We talk about category growth because in all our big categories, we play the portfolio. And we always say that in all our big categories, we straddle the price benefit pyramid. Look at hair, yeah, which Madhu talked about. At the bottom of pyramid, you have Clinic Plus. That's the family health brand. Then you have a mass beauty at Sunsilk. We're not going to vacate them. Yeah? Then you get into brands like Dove and TRESemmé and Indulekha, where premiumization happens and they are catering to specific needs with a salon kind of hair or damage repair. But we are not going to vacate ever the Clinic Plus of the world or Sunsilk.
Similarly, while we are taking consumers, lifting them to higher order benefits, we are not going to take our eyes off Wheel. We are not going to take our eyes off Taaza. So we are not going to vacate position because India is a game where you have to straddle the portfolio if you have to be the market leader.
Sure. Got it. Thank you very much.
Sanjiv, I'll take a question from the web. I'm not sure if you will have a comment for this, but it comes from Jeff Stent at BNP Paribas. He says it's conceivable that at some juncture over the next decade, HUL's market cap could be bigger than Unilever's. What, if anything, could be the implications of this?
Can I pass this question, please?
Okay. Back to the room, Manoj at the back, please.
Sanjiv, hi. So there was an announcement by Unilever PLC earlier part of the calendar about a new organizational structure which they want to implement globally, which is moving from markets to business groups. Now, from an HUL point of view, you know, it would be helpful if you could comment about where are we in the journey and what are the medium-term implications, which could be plus zero or minus?
Yeah. Yeah. You know what, the new structure of Unilever. The first is, the old structure of Unilever had outlived its utility, the matrix structure, because it was slowing us down. And the new structure we got into it because it was lending itself to greater focus, consumer intimacy, and higher degree of accountability. Yeah? That was the purpose behind getting into the new structure. Now, remember something that in HUL, the executive leadership always rested with the CEO. And my accountability was total. Whatever happens in HUL, whoever may be responsible for it, the accountability is mine. That's absolutely clear. And this does not change in the new structure. Yeah? But what we have done is we have aligned ourselves with the new structure. Yeah? So we have Home Care, we have Beauty & Wellbeing, and we have Personal Care, which comes under Madhu as BPC.
We have Nutrition and Ice Cream. Nutrition includes the foods and refreshment, which comes under Tan. The benefit to us is this is going to result in better global innovations, better speed to the market. And I believe firmly that this is going to be in the interest of HUL as well. So what we have done, we have retained the accountability and the executive leadership while aligning ourselves with the new structure of Unilever.
Thanks, Sanjiv. I'm sorry, just a small clarification. You know, so does anything actually change in terms of operating model as far as HUL is concerned?
No, the operating model of HUL doesn't change. You know, like Unilever has got five business groups. We also have five business units, but we run the five business units under three leaders. Yeah? That's what happens, like it was before. So we haven't changed that. But I firmly believe that the speed of innovation is going to be of a different order. And today, for instance, Madhu sits on the top teams of Beauty and well-being and Personal Care. Yeah? My friend Deepak sits on the top team of Home Care. Tan sits on the top team of Ice Cream and Nutrition. And similarly, each of my functional leaders sits on the top team of Unilever's functions. So for us, it is closer to the epicenter of Unilever, also because we are so big and so important for Unilever, and that augurs well for us.
If you want some insight into how Unilever is changing, let me ask Madhu to give some insight as to how things are changing with the new structure and why we believe it is going to be good for HUL.
Yeah. So, you know, in the last few months, my experience of working in the business groups, both Beauty & Wellbeing and PC, I can think of three distinct advantages for HUL. The first one is speed of decision-making as we move from a matrix structure to a single-line business group structure. Things are getting decided fast. The movement is fast. The second one is the focus on strategy and really bringing in the best of Unilever, both in terms of technologies and capabilities. I see that as a clear, distinct advantage that is flowing through perfectly now. The third one is the recognition of India, the power of HUL as an execution powerhouse, and the resources that are now gravitating toward our business groups. I think that is a fabulous competitive advantage for us going forward.
Sanjiv, Madhu, thank you. The second question is closer home. So the last 10 years volume growth of 5%, you know, that's a fact. The second fact is also that, you know, you are one of the only few companies who actually report UVG. You know, there are many companies which add an INR 20 product with an INR 200 product and say, "Look, my volume growth is in double digits," which as analysts, we struggle to agree with. You know, so the context is in that 5%, given that mix is also included, right? So that's one component. There's also a component of population growth. So when I strip off these two, the actual tonnage growth, which is likely a reflection of penetration growth plus the per capita consumption increase, which possibly predominantly has to happen in the bottom end, which is what Vivek asked, you know, earlier.
The question here is, you know, as industry leaders, which is HUL and a bunch of other companies, you know, at least as analysts, we are unsure whether there is enough category development activities happening, you know, in either improving penetration or per capita consumption, going with the statistics, what we have seen in the last 10 years.
Yeah. That's a very good question, Manoj. And you know, if you look at the last two years, there were two years, demonetization and the COVID first year, where there was virtually no growth. And if you take that out, then the volume growth would be approximately 60%-70% of our USC. That's the normal pattern. And I think that's a healthy pattern because 2%, 3% price growth also allows you to take care of the inflation that is taking place in the other segments of the P&L. Yeah? And so that's a very healthy model. If you look at, as a country, our population growth is now less than 1%. And it is slowly moving towards an era where even this will disappear. Yeah? But it's still, it hasn't reached there. So a large part of our growth is going to come from GDP growth.
The GDP growth and the dispersion of the GDP growth, yeah, is if we have our Gini coefficient goes down, it would be so much the better. Because if Mukesh Bhai's income goes up, that's not going to impact FMCG. We need more people to earn more for FMCG to grow. And that is the reason why we need inclusive growth in the country. Yeah? Many times, the 6% GDP doesn't capture how inclusive it has been. But I think if you look at the fundamentals of the economy today, I'm much more optimistic today that going forward, it will be much more inclusive growth than we have seen in the past. And that is where the difference for FMCG will kick in.
For us, what we also need is people to move from the bottom of the pyramid to the middle class, where the propensity of income, of spending, goes up significantly.
Understood. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you.
Hello. Yeah, hi. This is Arnab from Goldman. My first question was on the premium business unit. What would be, in your mind, the measure of success of this initiative? Would you compare, let's say, revenue of this business with, let's say, the INR 3,000-INR 4,000 crore D2C bigger brands revenue put together? And is there any merit? Like, I think in the rest of the Unilever world, some of the prestige brands are run kind of in a separate company with much more agility. Is there merit in doing that versus running it completely as part of the HUL core business?
The premium business unit has been in operation for about two years now. We have launched five new brands over the last few years. To me, the value of the PBBU has got many dimensions. That would be the measure of success. The first one is fundamentally changing the rhythm of innovations and bringing things more agile into the market. As Sanjiv said, we are now bringing innovations in weeks and not in, you know, a year and a half like it used to happen in the past. The second one is the infrastructure to be more agile. We got six Nano Factories which are able to produce minimum quantities, small quantities, which can be customized to channels or even specific customers. The third one is building our capability and creating world-class digital marketing and execution capabilities.
It is about upper-end funnel influencer marketing, beauty tech, and performance marketing. And that is what the PBBU has been creating and democratizing across the board. And finally, it's about getting into the right demand spaces and scaling them up. I do believe that two years is too short a time for us to get to the stage of scaling up. And therefore, we are in the right demand spaces. I will take you to the example of Simple, which is now, you know, catching some fire. It is in clean beauty, already leadership position in some of the beauty.coms in face cleansing. I will talk about Acne Squad, which is the other brand that we showed this afternoon. Acne Squad is bringing a very specific therapeutic approach to solving the big problem of acne, which is dissecting acne into stages, dermatology in there.
I think we are in the right demand space there, and so on. So if you look at the digital-first brands, the scaling up happens when they move from online to offline. And that is where I believe we matter, and that would be our advantage. And again, looking at across the globe, the best-in-class D2C brands have 20%-25% coming from online. 75% is going to be offline. So watch this space. We are priming for many of these brands to catch some scale before we take them offline. And that would be the ultimate measure of success in terms of metrics on turnover, growth, and margin. All of them are going to be premium.
Just to follow up on that, so you spoke a lot about capabilities here. In terms of purely moving the needle on BPC growth, would it require a lot of time, maybe five, six years before it really starts moving the BPC growth, given that it's obviously very small compared to your rest of the business?
Just to give you an example, in the last 12 months, the growth of BPC has been twice that of market. So we are already on the momentum of growing, and I do believe many of the portfolio dramatic transformations we are doing, innovating in the right demand spaces, stretching our brands, bringing in new brands, innovating on formats, focusing on the specific channels that will come into play into the future and the execution powerhouse that we have. I have no reason to believe why we cannot continue the double-digit growth that we have.
Yeah. You know, we must also understand sometimes what we do is tend to compare one category with the other, but the nuances are very different. You know, when COVID happened and people stopped going outside, then categories like makeup and all got severely impacted.
Because sitting at home, of course, people were not applying as much makeup as they would when they step out. Yeah? And when the inflation went up, then it's very normal that consumers first veer towards categories which are more in the nature of essential, and then they go into more which are in the nature of relative discretionary. So that is the reason why BPC, at some stage, you would have seen the growth has been lower. But I think over from an attractiveness perspective, BPC remains one of the most attractive businesses for us.
Thanks. And my last question, I wanted to come back to Nutrition. The amount of effort you've put in the last three years, a huge number of million, if I read correctly, 46 million contacts, advertising, your drop prices, distribution. And the fact that the growth has not come through, now that you look back, are there any structural challenges that the category is facing? One of the things that we used to hear earlier during the GSK times was, you know, that kids are using dairy in different formats, yogurt, you know, breakfast cereal. And therefore, the opportunity of the cup of milk maybe going down in upper-income households. Any of those that you picked up which make it a little more difficult to move the needle compared to where you probably thought it was three years back?
Arnab, let’s say if you break it down into three parts where we bet ourselves on saying when we acquired, we will shift the needle. The first one was saying that over a period of time, new users weren’t coming in. I think the scale of sampling, you saw the numbers where new users are beginning to come in. That I think is working well. The second, from a distribution point of view, you said we’ll take it to a disproportionate number of stores so it’s accessible. That’s gone well. I think the part that continues to be a treadmill that we need to keep raising our game is about relevance of the category. I think when we get it right, if you’re able to raise relevance and get new users, we’re getting one end of it right.
Equally, at the higher end, we need to raise the relevance, which is why we've invested in the plus range. We're trying to talk about condition awareness. So if I were to look at it in balance, getting new users, it is working. It's coming at a cost, but the lifetime value is really, really lucrative. The constant treadmill is how do we make this category consistently more relevant? Because if you take a long-term view, the only one that has grown this category and got new users has either been GSK in the past or more recently us. So therefore, the onus is on us to really make sure there are multiple offerings that a mom has, which she may think is most nutritious. How do we present ourselves as the most nutritious offering is at the heart of being relevant consistently and therefore accelerating users.
Have we done a great job of it? No, we are learning. There's a lot more to be done in that space.
Thanks.
At the back, Sheela, please.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. So my first question was with respect to what we said in the presentation that premium accounts for 33% of our portfolio. We're talking about premium growing at 2X of the core. However, despite that, we believe that our margins will be expanding in a modest fashion. It feels like we are being a little more conservative with respect to our margins over the medium term.
You know, we have to build the business on a long-term sustainable basis. So we are today at a very healthy margin. Yeah? We had delivered 25% EBITDA. And I'm sure with the commodity prices cooling off, we'll again go back to that level. After that, if the margins come in, and yes, premiumization will, it's certainly going to help the gross margins, I'll definitely put more money into developing the markets. And that's how we will get more growth. And that's how we will cement the position in the country.
Just to follow up there, because what I see is that the Home Care portfolio is in a very strong space right now with low competitive intensity. We are innovating very quickly on the BPC portfolio. Where we see more market development is on the premium beauty unit as well as the Nutrition portfolio. So is there where we are more, you know, that's where our conservativeness is coming from. Is that a right observation?
No, no, no, no, no, not at all. Let me have Madhu and Tan explain to you how market development and premiumization is taking place in beauty as well as in Nutrition.
Yeah. So, you know, when we look at premiumization, there are three levels to it. The first one is stretching our brand equities into higher-order demand spaces which can attract a premium. That's what we are doing across the board. You know, if you talk about a brand like TRESemmé, you know, premiumizing into masstige spaces with more and more formats like serums or hair masks and so on. If I take another example in the skincare category, it is really about stretching Lakmé from a makeup brand into face care, into creams, and beyond. So that's one part of premiumization.
The second one is really driving market development into the premium segments, which requires a lot of effort in terms of going to the consumer, sampling, education, and consistently investing year after year. This is a long-term journey, and that is where the premiumization of building categories, hair conditioners, body washes, sun care, the penetration of these categories is in single digits in this country today, and they will grow. They will become big, and we want to be at the forefront of driving that, so therefore, when we talk about premiumization, you can see already a lot of our efforts and initiatives finding expression in the market. We need to stay true to this strategy and do it consistently, and that is where I do believe is the big prize. That is where there will be a lot of investments, so it is not at all conservative.
I think it is actually aggressive to take on a long-term perspective on premiumization and drive the entire engine forward. But we are really seeing the benefits of that coming through even in the last couple of years in terms of the changes in the transformation.
Yeah. You know, the lady is not, I think, saying that we are conservative on premiumization. She was talking about we are being conservative on a margin aspiration. Yeah? That's what you meant is our premiumization thrust is going to certainly be there. We are also very cognizant that we have to be ready for more competitive intensity. And we want to be ready for that.
Just to round up on Nutrition, see the stated ambition is nourish a billion lives. And the big difference the brand can make is actually get a lot more inclusivity in solving the micronutrient problem.
Therefore, the size to grow and the headroom to grow is a lot more lower down the pyramid, which is where you saw today a lot of sachet packs, a lot of ready mix. Now, versus that and the premium end, you are arguably going to have a lower gross margin portfolio here and a higher gross margin portfolio there. But the absolute size expansion, which we've seen successfully in categories like hair and laundry, that journey is to be traversed in Nutrition. And the first step in that journey is get more users in. And that's the one which is seeing momentum. And it will take more effort in market development and will start coming in at lower margins, and then you'll build it up.
So, we've built an aggressive framework of recruiting at the top basis condition awareness, but equally redeploying at market development to get many new consumers at the lower end of the pops later where the micronutrient deficiency actually is far more harmful. So, it is a question of we'll earn in one side and deploy in the other side. It's a conscious choice. Otherwise, this category grows, you will see spurts. You will not see consistent buildup of the category. We may gain share in a few years, but for the market leadership we have, certainly in the south and the east, the onus is to expand the category year after year after year. And that requires consistent investment. And that's the choice, and that's how the margin has been built.
Thank you. Can I ask one more question? Very basic question. We are now at 9 million distribution. Our distribution network is 9 million. Direct distribution is 2.2 million. Have we reached a point where this is where the limit is and we just need to be more strategic in terms of how we use our distribution?
Thank you very much. I was wondering if the category conversation continues, we'll continue to sell anyway. So thank you very much for that question. See, you're right. We speak about the fact that our products are available in 9 million+ outlets. Out of what Nielsen says is 11 million outlets. The question you're saying is, is the quantity of distribution good enough, optimum now, and should we be focusing on quality of distribution? So what you saw today in my section also is exactly that. We believe that our speed of expansion of distribution is now plateauing to the level that we can add about 100,000 outlets to our coverage directly, about every year. But this is at the tail of the tail outlets where Shikhar, Samadhan, Peace is allowing us to democratize our access.
And the quality of distribution, the 2.2 million outlet goes up because it's not just the salesperson who walks in, but also the Shikhar that's available. So if you are able to extract more value out of these outlets, they represent a good 70%-80% of the value that's available in the general trade system. So you've got it right, and our efforts and our investments are in the right place to get more value out of this coverage that we have.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kedar. Richard, I think you had a question.
Yeah, hi, thanks. Actually got two to three questions. Number one, you know, if you look at the GSK bit, would it be possible for us to get a sort of a comparison between what you expected at the time of the acquisition and now that, you know, three years or whatever have gone by? And I know there are many reasons for why it probably didn't pan out the way it should have. You know, in terms of the actual delivery versus acquisition assumption, both on top line and margin, and how does that look? And how do we bridge that? I mean, other than the fact that, you know, that over time things will improve, inflation will come down, and consumer sentiments will go up.
Yeah, so Richard, let me pick it up. So there are three clear jobs to be done as we acquired the business. The first job was to ensure that we do complete integration of the business, the number of outlets we cover directly, supply chain integration, people integration, realizing synergies. So that job has got done. Second job for us was very clearly to drive cost synergies as we acquired the business. And this is where we have mentioned consistently that what we have generated as savings from the integration, it's ahead of the business case till now, even for two and a half years that we are into it. The third job, of course, is clearly revenue synergies. And Tan covered at length the work which is happening in market development, increasing penetration, increasing market share. And we have met success there as well.
Penetration is higher compared to when we acquired the business. Market shares are higher compared to when we acquired the business. Now, if I add all of these three things put together, ultimately we have to make money. And this is how the financial business case gets written. Today, in two and a half years of acquisition, we are ahead of the financial business case in terms of cash generation from the business. So hence, I will just summarize everything. We are ahead of the cash generation in the business.
Thanks, Ritesh. You know, Sanjiv mentioned that, you know, that with inflation coming down, we probably get back to the 25% margin that we were at, you know, prior to this whole thing happening. With GSK in the portfolio and accounting for about 10% of the revenue, should not that 25% naturally have anyway gone up?
Yeah. So, of course, there are two or three different variables. As I mentioned that with GSK, the amount of savings that we have driven is substantial and is ahead of the business case. But again, remember the point Tan mentioned. We also equally invested the market development, communication, product, the price point excess pack that we have done. The whole interest for us of driving savings for GSK was to invest back in the business. There's a big job to be done for us to create value in long term by generating more penetration and more consumption. So this is where the investments are today angled into. If I just take the question one level up now, overall EBITDA margins, today we are at 23.3% as we speak. And of course, at this 23.3%, we are sitting at a pretty substantial price versus cost gap.
I articulated 22% material cost inflation, 12% pricing, 10%. Historically, this number would be anywhere from 1% to 3%, either plus or minus, depending upon what's happening in the country, but never at 10%. Now, this is why I articulated in near term, one of the key focuses for us is the 600 basis points gross margin dilution that we have seen. We want to start building that back. Of course, there are two or three variables for that building back. A, continued job in terms of savings. B, we do expect, as we have seen in one commodity, and we do hope that there's a larger cool-off in other commodities as well, as supply demand stabilizes, as hopefully geopolitical situation stabilizes.
There are many more factors which will end up determining when and how robust will that recovery be in terms of inflation and lower inflation in terms of commodity. Now, the third clear element for us is, of course, heat, media heat in terms of A&P. Now, of course, as media heat goes up, we do expect in terms of investing more in A&P. Our objective remains, we have to drive salience, we have to drive our reach, and hence we will always be share of voice ahead of share of market. Sequentially, where we sit today, I do see we'll be able to build more sequential gross margin. But of course, a portion of that will get invested. How much time will tell us in terms of media heat into A&P? And that's what will end up determining.
Now, the medium-term outlook, as Sanjiv mentioned, we want to build back our margin to have our healthy margin levels. Now, the pace and the quarters it will take will all determine as to kind of, you know, the cards we dealt with in terms of inflation and in terms of consumption. Priority remains for us, competitive growth. As I mentioned, consumer franchise we want to increase is our number one priority, and along with that is to protect the business model. And once we reach to that healthy levels of margin, of course, from there onwards, our agenda ambition is to do a modest margin expansion, but how much time it will end up taking for us to reach to that 25 will all depend upon what happens in the market, geopolitical, inflation, and hence consumption impact.
Richard, you know, when I talked about 25%, I was not giving you a precise guidance. What I was telling you is if the commodity prices cool off, I was telling you our capability to restore the margins that we have lost. And if we have grown our margins by 1,000 basis points in the last 10 years, we certainly have the ability to restore what we have lost in a hyperinflationary state. That was the intent of mine.
Thanks, Sanjiv. Second question is, you know, if I come to what you used to earlier call personal products part of the portfolio, right? And I think you also alluded to it that during the lockdown, you know, because people were not going out, there was less makeup, less cosmetics, et cetera, et cetera. And unfortunately, after the lockdown ended, obviously this whole slowdown in inflation came. You know, just like that slide that was shown in terms of Ice Creams, right? That 100 became 38 and whatever. Is there any way to indicate that for this part of the portfolio, which was impacted by mobility, how has that fared pre-COVID during the lockdown and now? Because, you know, I would think that Ice Cream is as non-essential maybe as, you know, some of those products.
Yeah. So I think, Madhu, give an example of Lakmé business, how it took a dip and how it's bounced back.
Lakmé is a good example, which is all about makeup. When people are not going out, there won't be any makeup. It impacted us quite substantially. A lot of Lakmé also gets sold through beauty advisors who educate and create the experience in stores. That all got closed down. There was quite a significant impact on stores closing down, therefore the Lakmé business. What we've seen is in the last two quarters, specifically September quarter, Lakmé has bounced back in terms of the growth and the turnover. It's higher than what it was before COVID. To us, it represents a significant shift in the way now the market is responding, and that's what we want to carry forward.
Okay, one more if I may. Sanjiv, you talked about inclusive growth, right? And I think, you know, at least if I take a reading of all the results that companies in different sectors have been reporting recently, I think we are probably in an environment at least currently where there is actually no inclusive growth, right? Because the categories consumed by the rich are doing well and, you know, toothpaste and GAL are not really selling as well, right? I mean, how do you see this, you know, this trend reversing?
You know, if you look at even a much better evidence is government is providing free food grains to nearly 800 million people. And this free food grains, which is 5 kg of food grains which was started during COVID, has now been extended up to the end of December. And this is one very clear indication of the stress in the economy as far as the lower strata is concerned. And there have been various factors which have lent to it. There was the reverse migration which took place from the cities to the villages. That added to significant reduction of income. Then it was the inflation which came in. But if we get into a normal period where the input prices for agriculture are lower than the realization, then we should start seeing more income come into the hands.
I think the two good indicators would be once the government weans away this free food grains. After that, if the MGNREGA outlay does not increase, then that would be a good sign that we are seeing more income coming into the hands of rural consumers. You know, the government was very clear. They had put an outlay of nearly about INR 80,000 crores on MGNREGA, but with a very clear understanding that if the need arises, they will extend it and put more money in MGNREGA. I think they have done that. That's a good sign because you have to look after the people at the bottom of the pyramid. If after weaning away the free food grains, MGNREGA does not increase, that to me would be an excellent sign that the growth at the bottom pyramid is beginning to happen.
Thank you very much. All the best.
All right. Given the time.
Yeah, there is a lady from JPMorgan. We have so few ladies over here. How can we not give her a chance to ask questions?
All right. Latika.
Yeah, can you give a mic to Latika, please?
Here, in the front, please.
Okay, so first, Sanjiv, something that just came to my mind when you were just answering the previous question. You know, we are heading into elections in 2024. In your experience, you know, pre-election spending, which hopefully might be there next year, do you think that could be a trigger for the staples back?
You know, last election, we had done a lot of work to understand whether during election, there is a huge spike in consumption of FMCG. And Tan, you remember, you were heading CD that time. And you came to a conclusion that leaving aside a few categories like tea and all consumption, maybe, it doesn't result in a huge spike. And also now, I think there is a greater consciousness that pre-election do not get into the populist measures which will come to haunt you later. So those days are, I believe, slowly getting away. So I don't think that is going to have a major impact than the other structural changes like the GDP accelerating and the inflation coming down, which would have a much bigger impact on FMCG.
Sure. Just coming back to the business, and this is for premium BPC, you know, clearly, you know, we are seeing external funding is becoming difficult. You know, and there was a lot of chatter around, you know, how these premium brands were coming up. Do you see, you know, drying up of these funds, you know, improving the competitive landscape in that particular bucket? And clearly, you have also stepped up your efforts in that direction. We have seen two recent launches. Are you getting more, you know, are you sensing lesser valuations for any assets that come your way? Would that make you more aggressive towards M&A in this BPC space?
Yeah, I will certainly give it to Madhu. Madhu, you can reflect on it. But it's a fact, Latika, that the era of so cheap money has gone away. Yeah? And there would be very clearly some more sensibility on valuations than what it was in the past. But when it comes to M&A, we look at it from a real strategic lens. And Captain, can you allude to it?
Yeah, so we are absolutely open to M&A when it comes to premiumization in BPC, and we would look at it from the following criteria. The first one is strategic fit, the valuations, and the third one is, of course, the trade-off between how much does it take to create organically a new brand versus how much we are going to pay out and the commercial viability, so those are the things that we are really looking for.
Yeah, Latika, just because it was fashionable to acquire, we did not get into that fad. But we are always on the lookout for a good M&A candidate. And if it meets the criteria which Captain talked about, then we will go for it.
Sure. And the last one is on, you know, digitally captured sales, you know, that's about 25%. Any way we can get a flavor of what's the breakup, you know, between e-commerce, eB2B, and Shikhar, and, you know, or maybe qualitative, which is trending faster in this salience?
You know, the biggest jump has been eB2B. Yeah? It's even when you look at it, e-commerce, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of 7%-8% for us. And this is a secular trend. It is bound to keep growing up for the simple reason, the benefit and the convenience part. And convenience when you talk about the assortment that you get, et cetera and all. So it is bound to grow. But I always keep saying that never write off or never write the obituary of the general trade in our country. It is not going to happen. And for us, it is not just about a high tech. It is high tech with high touch. Both are going to be there. And I'm pleased that we are creating ecosystems where digital is increasingly playing a much bigger part. And this 25% is bound to grow.
eB2B, what is like Shikhar's contribution? That's entirely Shikhar? Thank you.
All right. I know we can probably go.
You know, can we have time for two questions?
Sure.
Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, there are two persons in my team to whom you have not asked any questions. One is my super duper R&D scientist. And the other is my absolutely brilliant supply chain head. So there's time for two questions, one on supply chain, one on R&D. Supply chain, R&D. R&D.
Can you pass the mic there, please?
Slightly left field. Just from an R&D perspective, how do you integrate the ESG imperatives that investors and even as management you have into R&D? And a specific question there is if we think about sachets in the business, if I think about it, it tends to be single use, cannot be recycled. And in India, obviously from a category development point of view, it is an important product, but also has environmental footprint. So just love to get your perspective on how do you or can you minimize impact from that. Thanks.
Thanks, Sanjiv, and thanks for the question. Look, I think we are looking at an integrated approach in terms of the way we look at product superiority, savings, and sustainability, all as three sort of angles to a triangle. When you looked at Deepak's presentation, for example, he spoke about Clean Future. He said that we are operating in a portfolio that is largely petrochemical driven. And therefore, we are looking at alternate materials that either come from what we call the Carbon Rainbow, which is gray carbon, other sources of carbon, and so on, including biotech, which we are using to actually replace the materials that come from petrochemicals. And that's one example of it.
If you saw, for example, the example that he showed you on the bars, and if you noticed at the bottom of it, it was basically a nil phosphate bar, right? So we are taking out materials that have high carbon footprints. We are using that. We have also gone public where we have said that, for example, we are working with companies that capture carbon and convert those into chemicals, and we are using those chemicals. So therefore, we are really trying very actively to reduce our carbon footprint. Madhu also spoke about how we are using NDPE palm, right? So we are moving away from any other sourced palm into 100% NDPE palm, which is what we are going to be using by the end of the year and thereby by the end of 2023.
Therefore, we are working on ways by which we can incorporate this without any impact in terms of gross margin. Those are the ways we are really driving the agenda in terms of what we are doing on broad sustainability criteria. In terms of plastics, and I'll just come to your question on sachet, but all of the work that we are doing on plastics, we're looking at less, better, and no. Less is we are looking at actively lightweighting the plastic that we use. Better is we are looking at more and more incorporation of PCR, post-consumer use recycled material. We are looking at ways by which we can actually do away without plastic. For example, in our cartons, et cetera, that we use across F&R and even in the case of skin cleansing, we completely eliminated plastic from the cartons.
And all our sachets, I'm delighted to report, are now by December will be 100% recyclable. So we have moved our material that we use to make our hair sachets and all of that from a non-recyclable material to a recyclable material. And all of that is combined with the efforts that you heard about, which is really that we collect more plastic than we actually put into the market. Our focus has been in terms of collecting flexibles. And so therefore, that's the sort of circularity that we are trying to drive as well. Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Vibhav. Last question on supply chain.
In fact, I have a question.
Yeah, gentlemen over there.
Oh, okay.
You know, guys, why I'm asking you to raise question to these two gentlemen? I want my ROI, [Foreign language]
No, I think I had a round of discussion when we met in the breakout session. One broad question we asked in the beginning also, in the supply chain and DC, the day's supply, which was the question which I asked to Yogesh also, that this is you said three days, but the presentation showed us six days. So I still remember that number. Having done manufacturing, it's pretty close to my heart. What I wanted to understand, and this question I asked to Yogesh also, that does that mean we have reorganized the trade inventory also?
Because if you are working with a three-day cycle and you have multiple channels and format which is evolving, and we are anyway capturing the digital connect with the customers, I mean, the retailers, do the retailer need to cut the inventory, which traditionally in the FMCG centers used to be seasonally in the seasonal product categories, which used to be a month, 45 days, which has already come down to 15 days. And that's the winning proposition, which is bringing more people on the eShikhar platform. That's what my understanding is, but let me correct if it is right or wrong.
That's a very good question.
So firstly, I will say that both the numbers are correct. But we've seen the presentation, the six number, and Sanjiv talked about three because we measure every month in DBNR. And whatever I've shown you, this was the YTD number six. And what Sanjiv talked about is the last quarter number, which is less than three, which is the right number. And second thing, as you said, the inventory point of view, if you see this key, DBNR, we have reduced the inventory over the years, and DBNR is not the only one lever. It's one of the levers. And biggest lever is this, the way we are organizing our network through the Nakshatra because we are now going closer to the market, and that reduces our lead time, and we were able to reduce the inventory significantly.
Second is DBNR has also given advantage in the inventory because now when we used to make our core SKUs, suppose in the 10 days, and now we are making three to four days, so we have reduced the cycle stock significantly. So these two initiatives have given benefit in inventory up to the depot level. They have not given the benefit in terms of the entire value chain. However, the single biggest advantage happened with this, the DBNR, because the freshness has increased because overall stock has been reduced.
So, if I may ask for the.
If I may, you know, I'll just complete the front end of his question. You know, earlier we used to have salesmen go on a certain beat, and they would go and pick up the order. And we would deliver the goods on N plus three basis. Now our entire thrust is to deliver the demand on N plus one basis. And even between a salesman's visit, if the stock goes out, the retailer can place an order on Shikhar, right? So conceptually, the retailer can work with much lower inventories, much lower depth of inventories than what they used to do in the past.
Our thrust is if earlier the retailer spent, say, theoretically INR 100 and had five SKUs with an inventory depth of four per SKU, we would rather now have a wider assortment but lesser depth so that we can service it quicker and have a higher throughput.
I understand what you're saying. Having done manufacturing in my life, the real question is that if there is a sudden spike in your sales requirement or ordering, how would you manage this DBNR? Because what I understand, seasonality is not in our hand. The sudden spike in the market is not in our hand, and with six days, whatever is the benchmark, what I need to understand, do you have a flexibility or it's a guiding principle?
No, no, no, no, no. First, let me explain to you some basics of how we run the business. There are three axes. Yeah? One is information. The closest you have information to the consumer, the better it is. The second is what is your resilience that you have built into the system, which is the spare capacity. And the third is the agility that you have built into the business. So you have to look at all three axes before you come to any conclusion that whether we can meet the changing demand or not. And my answer to you is we can meet the changing demand. Why do we operate at 75% operating efficiency and not 99%? That is because of inbuilt resilience. Resilience implies there is spare capacity in the system.
That's good to know. Always supply chain works on time and complete. I hope that principle is followed.
You know, why do we have a return on capital employed of three digits?
Wonderful. Thank you, Sanjiv.
Thank you. So when I was planning this event, I knew closing the Q&A will be tough, but I never expected the Management Committee will be so happy to answer that they extended by 15 minutes.
Not only extolling people to raise questions.
Indeed. Can I call upon Ritesh to close the session, please?
First of all, fabulous day. I want to start by thanking all of you for the quality of engagement, engagement while listening to various sessions, engagement in the breakouts with your questions, and of course, last one hour plus of questions in the room. Super thanks to all of you. A great shout and thanks to my Management Committee and to all the team at HUL and team Showbiz, which has allowed us and helped us to put the entire event together. I'll just probably steal one more line, one line from Sanjiv's last slide, which is we have never been as strong, but our best is yet to come. On that note, Tan showed you a nice ad on Taj Mahal chai. How can we end the day without having a Taj Mahal tea together?
So please join the Management Committee with just one floor down, where we had a lunch for a cup of tea before we all say goodbye to you. Thank you so much.