Unilever Case Study Of India Essay

4.15 Unilever’s interest in India
There was a mixture of responses when the Shakti women were asked about why they thought Unilever was interested in India.
Shakti 1 believed there was a lot of potential in the country and noted that sachet products – such as shampoo, priced from 1 Rupee - were affordable. Shakti 2 said HUL wanted products available in all houses in India and perhaps the company was thinking about the scope for business in rural areas.
Shakti 3 believed that the interest was due to the size of India’s population, although she had “no idea” what the population was. She eventually guessed at 500 million. According to official figures, India’s population is 1.21 billion (Census India 2011).
Shaktis 4, 7 and 11 needed help with

Amongst the Shakti women’s product offerings was Unilever’s Clinic Plus shampoo, selling for just 1 Rupee (0.01 USD) per sachet. As a best seller, Shakti 2 made specific reference to its affordability, as did Shakti 9.
Clinic Plus is a good example of “reverse engineering” (The Economist 2012. No pagination) – not just pricing, but designing for affordability.
It could be argued that reverse engineering is the antithesis of Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory (Rogers 2003 pp214-15). Rather than pushing a product into the market and the “early majority” waiting for the price to come down through demand, manufacturers essentially skip the “innovators” and “early adopters” segments by producing a product that is designed with the affordability of the market in mind and the aim of quick acceptance.
Keegan & Green (2013) have cited underground biogas chambers, which generate power from cattle dung, as another example of reverse engineering.
The researcher witnessed dung-induced energy or “poo power” (CNN 2009) first hand in India at one of the interviewee’s houses where it was explained that cattle dung generated gas power. Scientists have established that the digestive systems of all creatures produce methane from ingested