CSR360

Posted: Wednesday 12 October 11, 10.39am GMT

1. Why did you choose this activity and location/s?

This venture, called the Shakti Initiative, started back in 2000 with the idea of empowering underprivileged rural women. It reached out to these embryonic entrepreneurs, identifying and training a sales force termed the “Shakti Ammas” (literally strength mothers). Underprivileged rural women constituted the most marginalized group in society. These women—who had little or no business skills—acted as direct representatives for Hindustan Unilever in their villages. We worked closely with rural self-help groups, microcredit lenders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the Indian government—the forces that were changing the nature of the market.

By defining the direct representative as the customer and focusing the value proposition on giving her a viable business opportunity, Hindustan Unilever built a model designed for long-term growth that was difficult for competitors to replicate along with serving the purpose of giving back to society.

Teaching a rural population the benefits of washing hands before eating—thus decreasing intestinal infections, a leading cause of childhood mortality—made the Ammas more than Avon ladies; it gave them increased social stature because they provided an important benefit to the village. By promoting micro-enterprise, HLL’s initiative would not only make great business sense but would also have deep social impact.

2. What was the impact of your activity over a specified period of time? And the impact on Shatki entepreneurs?

The average Shakti entrepreneur brought in enough money to effectively double her household income, and the impact on the community was palpable. As the Shakti team honed the profit formula and refined the key resources and processes to nail the job-to-be-done, operations expanded to sixty women by the beginning of 2003 and then to twenty-eight hundred women entrepreneurs covering twelve thousand villages by the end of that year. By 2007, the model had been refined and tested extensively: It was time to ramp up the business.

Shakti expanded to 45,000 Shakti Ammas covering more than 100,000 villages across 15 states in the country, and reaching over 3 million homes. For their villages, the Shakti Ammas bought the equivalent of almost Rs 680 Crores worth of consumer goods from Hindustan Unilever in 2010 and help driving the health and hygiene to improve the livelihood of their fellow villagers.

About the impact on Shatki Entrepreneurs, we can say that it was mainly economic, as the average HH income of Shakti Entrepreneur have been almost doubled which supplements to their other income. But there are also social impacts because the women were empowered to set up and run their own businesses and are now being considered as a role model to other women in the village. This has helped them live their life with Pride & Esteem.

3. How have the local people been involved?

Recruitment of Shakti Entrepreneurs is always at the location where the person is based at. Our Rural Sales Promoters visit the respective villages and create an initial list of women who’re willing to take up the role. They meet local Self Help Groups, Rural Banks, Anganwadi workers etc to understand the village demographics and to help them find women with entrepreneurial drive.

4. Why do you think the activity/impact will be sustainable?

Continuous perseverance displayed by Hindustan Unilever has made this model very strong and sustainable in the sense that this is the best way we can give it back to the society through supporting our cause of ‘empowering underprivileged rural women’ along with making business sense. This is sustainable as it is profitable to the Shakti Entrepreneurs as well. It has given continuous incremental profits to the Shakti Amma across India where this model has been rolled out and the activity is being continuously improvised.

Today Shakti provides livelihood opportunities to more than 40,000 women across India who provide access to quality products across 100,000+ villages and 3 million households every month. Shakti has emerged as a successful model in helping the upliftment of the rural women. Income generated: Shakti entrepreneur incomes average Rs 500 per month, doubles household income through supplemental activity, 30% of entrepreneurs earn more than rural per capita income. A pipeline that can build partnerships for socio-economic interventions.

5. What are your plans for the future?

We’ve already taken one step to add more value to the household of Shakti Entrepreneurs by giving opportunity to the male members of their society through our additional project Shaktimaan we rolled out last year.

Hindustan Unilever is fully committed to make real difference to the lives of the underprivileged women through the addition of business and hence increasing their HH income along with providing them opportunity to grow in self esteem and pride in their society.