Unilever is working to improve lives through its Shakti mission in India. It has the following goals: [1] reach 100,000 villages by the end of 2006, [2] reach 250 million additional consumers through 100,000 entrepreneurs by 2010, and [3] become a source of growth for HLL in the long term. The document outlines marketing, economic, and social issues and proposes using a multi-level marketing structure and addressing specific issues to make progress towards the goals.

1. Unilever in India
Olympia’s view
Iurii Dubyk
Sergiy Kornyliuk
Tetiana Dymytrashchuk
Liubomyr Bregman
Roman Kornyliuk

2. Each company
is responsible for
the community

4. Shakti mission
 Improving lives

5. Our goals
 Short-term goal - to double the amount of villages and
to reach 100,000 villages by the end of 2006.
 Middle-term goal - to reach 250 million additional
consumers through 100,000 entrepreneurs by 2010.
 Long-term goal – to become a source of growth for
HLL.

6. Main issues
 Marketing:
Exponential growth is required
Low consumer culture & low brand consciousness
Low-income consumers
 Economic:
High personnel costs, ballooning with scale
Financing of Shakti is required
Financing of entrepreneurs in new regions is required
 Social:
Dependency of potential entrepreneurs (women)
NGOs and government agencies hesitancy in supporting the project
A number of local dialects

7. The best solution
A measure, implementation of which will solve the our most
complex problems:
Using Multilevel Marketing
in organizing entrepreneurs
What MLM structure gives us:
• Extensive growth – no additional efforts needed
• Making variable costs fixed
• Avoiding dialects issues

8. Following the MECE principle
Our next step is
to cover all the described issues with appropriate decisions
following
the MECE principle.
Mutually Exclusive
Collectively Exhaustive

9. Marketing issues
 Exponential growth will be carried by:
- MLM project structure;
- Extensive strategy – entering new region;
- Intensive strategy – “obtaining” new customers and entrepreneurs.
 Low consumer culture:
- the launch of an educational project Shakti Health under governmental
support.
 Low-income consumers:
- selling LUPs to new consumers.
 Low brand consciousness:
- selling a product not a brand

10. Economic issues
 High personnel costs, ballooning with scale:
- these variable costs are becoming fixed (for tapped region) because of
the MLM structure;
- for untapped region employed personnel can be used or new can be
hired (so cost for the region will become fixed).
 Financing entrepreneurs in new regions:
- will be provided by Bangladeshi Grameen Bank partner institutions as
micro-credits for women.

11. Economic issues (continuation)
 Attracting cost for Shakti financing:
1) We are selling LUPs of most popular brands of each product category.
2) We negotiate with brand managers in terms of Shakti financing and choose
one brand for each product category:
10-15% of revenues 10-15% of ex. Shakti revenues 10-15% of Shakti revenues
Brand marketing costs Brand marketing costs Shakti financing
3) Our arguments to brand managers:
o We promote limited number of brands;
o Commercials don’t reach the poorest people;
o Costs you give for Shakti will increase your turn-over more, than standard
advertisements.
4) We choose only one brand for each product category to be distributed via
Shakti.

12. Social issues
 Dependency of potential entrepreneurs (women)
- Shakti Family Business Program should be developed where man does the
business and woman helps him.
 NGOs and government agencies hesitancy in supporting the
project
- Shakti makes women’s lives better;
- Educational project Shakti Health makes people healthier;
- Shakti Family Business Program provides more qualitative life of the
families.
 A number of local dialects:
- Assistance to Shakti managers in learning English to develop their
communication abilities;
- MLM structure.

13. 100,000 villages by the end of 2006
250 million additional consumers through 100,000
entrepreneurs by 2010

14. Thank you for consideration!