Shakti means strength

Project “SHAKTI” is HUL’s

initiative to usher prosperity and uplift the
standard of living in rural India.
Hindustan Unilever Limited (abbreviated to HUL),
formerly Hindustan Lever Limited, is India's largest
consumer products company and was formed in 1933 as
Lever Brothers India Limited. It is currently
headquartered in Mumbai, India and its 41,000 employees
are headed by Harish Manwani, the non-executive chairman
of the board. HUL is the market leader in Indian products
such as tea, soaps, detergents, as its products have become
daily household name in India. The Anglo-Dutch company
Unilever owns a majority stake in Hindustan Unilever
Limited.

The company was renamed in late June 2007 to "Hindustan

Unilever Limited" to provide the optimum balance between
maintaining the heritage of the Company and the future
benefits and synergies of global alignment with the
corporate name of "Unilever"

HUL's brands, spread across 20 distinct consumer

categories, touch the lives of two out of three Indians. They
endow the company with a scale of combined volumes of
about 4 million tonnes and sales of Rs.10,000 crores.
HUL’s initiative in rural India
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) and its constituent
companies have been in India since 1931. Over these
decades, while HUL has benefited from the developments in
the country, it has contributed equally to these
developments.
HUL has been proactively
engaged in rural development since 1976 with the
initiation of the Integrated Rural Development
Programme in the Etah district of Uttar Pradesh, in
tandem with the company’s dairy operations. This
Programme now covers 500 villages in the district.
Subsequently, the factories that HUL continued establishing
in less-developed regions of the country have been engaged
in similar programmes in adjacent villages.
These factory-centered activities mainly
focus on training farmers, animal husbandry, generating
alternative income, health & hygiene and infrastructure
development.
The company has acquired a wealth of experience and
learning from these activities.

Project Shakti has its origin in the key learnings and findings
from these rural development programmes only.

Key learnings on rural development

The principal issue in rural development is to create
income-generating opportunities for the rural
population. Such initiatives are successful and sustainable
when linked with the company’s core business and is
mutually beneficial to both the population for whom the
programme is intended and for the company.
Based on these insights, HUL launched Project Shakti in the
year 2001, in keeping with the purpose of integrating business
interests with national interests.
 Introduction – project shakti

Shakti is HUL's rural initiative, which targets small villages

with population of less than 2000 people or less. It seeks to
empower underprivileged rural women by providing
income-generating opportunities, health and hygiene
education through the Shakti Vani programme, and
creating access to relevant information through the
iShakti community portal.

In general, rural women in India are underprivileged and

need a sustainable source of income. NGOs, governmental
bodies and other institutions have been working to improve
the status of rural women. Shakti is a pioneering effort in
creating livelihoods for rural women, organized in Self-Help
Groups (SHGs), and improving living standards in rural India.
Shakti provides critically needed additional income to these
women and their families, by equipping and training them to
become an extended arm of the company's operation.

Founded in Andhra Pradesh in 2000, Project Shakti (meaning

‘strength’) takes the classic micro-credit model a couple of
steps further. Its immediate aim is to foster a network of
rural women entrepreneurs, many of them wholly new to
business, enabling them to earn a decent living by selling
HUL’s products, such as soap or shampoo, on a commission
basis. As well as giving its members access to a range of
affordably-priced stock, it also provides them with business
education and support.
 Empowering women

By providing by providing by creating

Income generating health & hygiene access to
opportunities. education through relevant
Shakti-vani information
Programme i-shakti
Community
Portal.
 Empowering women

Empowering women may have different connotations. It

touches various facets of a woman’s life. Empowering what?
There are several strata in a woman’s world that need
empowerment - her educational status, self-confidence,
emotional state, economic condition, and position in the
family - all crave for empowerment. Most of the times,
various NGO’s, helping societies and other Governmental
bodies fail to do their task effectively, as they are not clear
with- “what does actually women empowerment include “
and ,hence, are not clear with their means of doing it.

We are glad that India’s

leading corporate house Hindustan Unilever Limited
(HUL) has embarked on a unique experiment in
empowering women, economically atleast. It helps
selected women in the rural areas in unfolding their
hidden potentiality to become successful
entrepreneurs. The project named HUL-Shakti is
spreading a silent revolution in empowerment of
women through out the country in its own way.

The real objective of Project Shakti

is to create income-generating
capabilities for underprivileged rural
women, by providing a sustainable
micro enterprise opportunity, and to
improve rural living standards through health and hygiene
awareness.

How it all happens?

First of all, Potential women who could garner the necessary

self-confidence and skill in transforming themselves into
micro-entrepreneurs are identified in the villages. We have
seen how micro credit of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh
has brought sweeping improvement in economic conditions
in that country. Project Shakti goes one step further. Besides
providing credit, it also provides necessary motivation
and training to the participating women. HUL is investing
significantly in resources who work with the women on
the field and provide them with on-the-job training and
support. This is a key factor in ensuring the stabilization of
their
fledgling business.

Since the women are

selected from the financially
weaker segment, the income
generated by them through
the project has brought vital
changes in their life pattern.
Under the scheme, women
are encouraged to form self-help groups. HUL provides them
with mass-market products ( well known brands from the
HUL stable- such as soaps, washing powder, cosmetics, tea,
packaged food and similar other products). The shy and
home-bound woman who never thought of being able to
venture into such an alien activity as marketing of consumer
goods in her own village, is provided the necessary strength
and confidence to prove her mettle.

It has led to creation of many micro women entrepreneurs in

rural India. Today most of the participating women of Project
Shakti view it as a powerful business proposition and are
keen participants in it. In addition to the money, there is
a marked change in the women’s status within their
own household. They have now a greater say in
decision-making. They have been able to contribute
actively in the living standards of their families.

Other aspects of Project-Shakti

Shakti, besides providing the underprivileged rural women,

opportunities to generate extra income for a decent living, it
even tries to uplift their standard of living, knowledge and
education through various other initiatives which are a part
of the project itself.

Shakti-Vani programme

Shakti Vani is a social communication programme. Women,

trained in health and hygiene issues, address villages
communities through meetings at schools, village baithaks,
SHG meetings and other social fora.
I-shakti

A key factor that has inhibited the development of rural

India has been lack of access to critical information and
services. Given India’s large geography and weak
infrastructure, it is often difficult to reach out to the rural
areas.

I-shakti is nothing but a network of internet ‘kiosks’. Run

by Shakti entrepreneurs, Ri-Shakti - is an IT-based rural
information service that has been developed to provide
information and services to meet rural needs in agriculture,
education, vocational training, health and hygiene.
The premise of the i-Shakti model is to provide need based
demand driven information and services across a large
variety of sectors that impact the daily livelihood
opportunities and living standards of the village community.

The i-Shakti kiosk will be operated by the Shakti

Entrepreneur, which further strengthens the relationship we
have already cultivated and builds new capacity. HUL
expects that the information provided would improve the
productivity of the rural community and unlock economic
and social progress.