“When my husband left me I had nothing. Today everyoneknows me. I am someone.”

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For Rojamma, Project Shakti meansbeing able to educate her daughters

Rojamma (right) with her 15 year old daughter Krishnaveni and 18 year old daughter Maheshwari who both go to school in a nearby village. Rojamma is proud that the income sheearns from Project Shakti has enabled her to educate her daughters and give them a better chance in life than she had.

Rojamma is a singleparent living inKurumurthy, a small

rural village 150 kilometressouth west of Hyderabad inthe Indian state of AndhraPradesh. From a very poorbackground, she was marriedat seventeen to a man withwhom she had two daughtersbut who then left her to fendfor herself. At first she earneda few rupees working in hermother’s field but she foundit difficult to live on.

A few years ago she joined awomen’s self-help group thatwas formed in the village tohelp women like Rojamma.“It felt good to be part of agroup but that’s not the sameas eating food”, sheremembers. But then a manfrom Hindustan Lever cameto Kurumurthy and told thewomen about Project Shakti.“From that moment my life changed”.

Hindustan Lever is Unilever’sbusiness in India. Its brandsinclude such well-knownnames as Lifebouy, Lux, Surf,Vim, Pond’s and Lipton, aswell as local brands, such as Kissan, Annapurna, Lakme,Fair & Lovely and Wheel.

The company generatesaround half its business fromIndia’s towns and cities andhalf from rural areas, whereits products are sold in some100,000 villages withpopulations of 2,000 or more.By the end of the 1990s,however, the companyrealised that to increase itsmarket share it had toexpand the market. Thechallenge was how to reachthe 500,000 villages withsmaller populations in moreremote parts of the country,where there are millions ofpotential consumers but noretail distribution network,

no advertising coverage andpoor roads and transport.

Hindustan Lever’s solution,called Project Shakti (whichmeans ‘strength’ in Sanskrit),was both bold andinnovative. The companydecided to tap into thegrowing number of women’sself-help groups that hadbeen springing up around thecountry. These groups, aboutone million of which nowexist across India, are usuallyformed to help women savemoney and borrow from eachother to avoid the excessivedemands of unscrupulousmoneylenders. HindustanLever made presentations atrural self-help groupmeetings, initially in AndhraPradesh, and invited women,including Rojamma, tobecome direct-to-consumersales distributors.

The company provides self-help group women withtraining in selling, commercialknowledge and book-keeping, teaching them tobecome fully-fledged micro-entrepreneurs. The womenwho are trained can thenchoose to set up their ownbusiness or to become ProjectShakti distributors – or ShaktiAmmas (‘mothers’) as theyhave become known. Eachwoman who becomes adistributor invests 10,000 –15,000 rupees (US$220-330) instock at the outset – usuallyborrowing from self-helpgroups or micro-financebanks facilitated byHindustan Lever. Each aims tohave around 500 customers,mainly drawn from hervillage’s self-help groups andfrom nearby smaller villages.

Most generate sales of10,000-12,000 rupees amonth, netting a monthly

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profit of 700-1,000 rupees(US$15-22). For those withhusbands who work in thefields, this typically doublesthe household income. Forsingle mothers like Rojamma,it is a far cry from the handfulof rupees she earned workingin her mother’s field.

Project Shakti has provedto be a great success forHindustan Lever and for

women in India. The projectstarted in a few pilot villagesin Andhra Pradesh in 2000. In 2002 it expanded to twostates and by the end of 2004had grown to over 13,000Shakti women entrepreneurscovering 50,000 villages in 12 states, selling to 70 millionconsumers. This represents a30% increase in ruralpopulation reached.

Hindustan Lever has hadstrong support from over 300 partners, including NGOs,banks and both state and localgovernment departments,who recognise the potentialfor economic growth byencouraging women tobecome entrepreneurs.Andhra Pradesh typically hada 3% success rate in creatingentrepreneurs amongwomen’s self-help groupsprior to Project Shakti. Thisinitiative has a 90% successrate so, not surprisingly,Andhra Pradesh’s Women’sEmpowerment Commissioner,Ms Ramalakshmi, requestsmonthly updates on ProjectShakti’s progress.

In 2003 Hindustan Leverstarted to pilot aninformation technologyinitiative called i-Shakti. Thisis designed to meet ruralvillagers’ information needs

and provide organisationswith communications accessto those parts of the countrynot reached by TV, radio andnewspapers. This involvescreating village ‘kiosks’containing internet-linkedcomputers run byentrepreneurs.

i-Shakti was formallylaunched in partnership withthe Government of AndhraPradesh in November 2004,and aims to have 3,500 i-Shakti kiosks on stream bythe end of 2005. Mostlyhoused in the homes ofShakti entrepreneurs, i-Shaktikiosks provide villagers withfree information on a widerange of topics, includinghealth and hygiene,agriculture and horticulture,child and adult education,finance, employment, andentertainment.

C ontent is in the local language and has been specially developed by

institutions and NGOs withexperts in these fields,including the Azim PremjiFoundation for children’seducation, the TataConsultancy Services’ AdultLiteracy Programme andICRISAT (International Crops

Research Institute for theSemi-Arid Tropics) forinformation on agriculture.

i-Shakti also includes aninteractive service in whichvillagers can email questionsto a panel of experts andreceive a response within 24 hours. Sharat Dhall,Hindustan Lever’s BusinessHead for the Shakti initiative,is excited about i-Shakti’scapabilities: “Farmers can find a quick solution to pestproblems with their crops,villagers can email theirsymptoms to a doctor and get a diagnosis in hoursrather than days, andcomputer programs withvoiceovers will teach peoplewho are illiterate”.

Hindustan Lever and itspartners are funding theinitiative in the initial stages,but in future it is planned tocharge content providers andbrand advertisers to make the initiative self-financingand to generate incomes fori-Shakti entrepreneurs.

While Hindustan Lever isintent on building its ruralsales and market share, it isequally committed toimproving the lives andlivelihoods of people in India.Shakti Vani (‘Voice’) takesProject Shakti a stage further.Hindustan Lever is nowtraining rural women to givetalks to villagers about basichealth practices, such as goodhygiene, disease preventionand pre- and post-natal care.

“Project Shakti’s role increating incomes forunderprivileged rural womenand helping to empowerthem economically is moreimportant than sales alone”,says Sharat Dhall.

He believes Project Shakti, i-Shakti and Shakti Vani willhave the potential to act as a catalyst for creating newmarkets and generating ruralmicro-economies.

He recognises this is somethingthat Hindustan Lever cannotachieve alone and is actively

building links with non-competitive partners, such asICICI Bank, which specialises inmicro-loans. At the same time,competitors and companiesfrom other sectors are watchingProject Shakti very closely andare expected to developsimilar distribution models.

Project Shakti’s goal is to recruit100,000 Shakti entrepreneurscovering 400,000 villages and400 million consumers by2008. “I believe it can becomethe biggest rural operation inthe history of Indian businessand change the way companieslook at reaching consumersliving in the smallest ofvillages”, says Sharat Dhall.

For the thousands of womenlike Rojamma who havebecome Shakti entrepreneurs,this initiative has alreadychanged their lives in waysthat are much more profound than the incomethey earn selling soaps andshampoos. It has broughtthem self-esteem, a sense ofempowerment and a place in society.

As Rojamma says: “When myhusband left me I hadnothing except my daughters.Today everyone knows me. Iam someone now”. It has alsomeant she has been able tosend her daughters to school,giving them the chance in lifeshe didn’t have, althoughRojamma’s aspirations forthem remain modest: “I hopethey have happy marriagesand they too become Shakti Ammas”.

Sujathamma Jella, who is both the Project Shakti distributor and i-Shakti kiosk owner forPeddakaparthy village, Andhra Pradesh, outside her house. Behind her, on the wall of herhouse, a painted poster advertises i-Shakti is inside.

“Creating incomes ismore important thansales alone”

“It can become thebiggest ruraloperation in thehistory of Indianbusiness”

Many of the brands Rojamma sells areproduced in small sizes to meet the needsand pockets of low-income consumers.For example, sachets of shampoo sell foras little as 50 paise (half a rupee) each.

Sujathamma’s computer isn’t just used asa portal for i-Shakti. These children arebeing taught IT skills by their schoolteacher, Nanda Kishore, on the village’sone and only computer.

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Cover picture: Rojamma setting out on her door-to-door visits in Kurumurthy, Andhra Pradesh, India.

As Project Shakti expanded into more and more villages, Hindustan Lever realised it couldplay a role in improving general health awareness. Shakti Vani (‘Voice’) is a brand-ledcommunication programme that educates rural communities about basic health practices,such as pre- and post-natal care, infant nutrition, sanitation, good hygiene practices, andthe prevention of common diseases.

Rural women, such as Jaya Bharaehi (centre), are appointed Vanis and trained to givetalks to community gatherings, such as schools and village get-togethers. By the end of2005, Shakti Vani will have visited 50,000 villages reaching over 12 million people.

Unilever believes that one of the best and most sustainable ways it can help to address global social and

environmental concerns is through the verybusiness of doing business in a socially awareand responsible manner.

This is one in a series of occasional articlescalled Global Challenges – Local Actions thatlooks at how Unilever companies are tacklingglobal social and environmental concerns byworking in partnership with local, national andinternational agencies, governments, businessorganisations and NGOs.

Hindustan Lever works in partnership withover 300 organisations on Project Shaktiand i-Shakti.

For more information about Project Shaktiand i-Shakti, including details of partnerorganisations, visit www.hllshakti.com or formore about Hindustan Lever visit www.hll.com

If you would like to know more about Unilever’ssocial and environmental activities, please visitwww.unilever.com/ourvalues/environmentandsociety. There you will find copies of our latestsocial and environmental reports and copies ofprevious articles in this series. Subjects of otherarticles include:

Global Challenges – Local Actions– Micronutrient deficiency in Africa– River pollution in Indonesia– Diarrhoeal diseases in Asia– Climate change/refrigeration in Europe– Sustainable fishing off Africa

We would like to hear from you. If you have any questions about this publication or any other aspect of Unilever’senvironmental and social policies, pleasecontact: csrcomment@unilever.com

Or write to:Corporate RelationsUnilever PLCPO Box 68London EC4P 4BQUnited Kingdom

Corporate RelationsUnilever N.V.PO Box 7603000 DK RotterdamThe Netherlands

Photographs Peter Jordan

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