on Jun 23, 2021)Mumbai: (HUL) CMD Sanjiv Mehta expects market growth to be resilient in rural areas even as Covid spreads to there. While addressing shareholders at the company’s 88th annual general meeting held virtually on Tuesday, Mehta said it will take a few more weeks to assess the impact in rural areas. However, with factors such as the IMD predicting a normal monsoon and an increase in minimum support price (MSP) on certain key crops, Mehta said the company is confident rural would remain resilient.
Mehta said the effects of the pandemic are just a pause in India’s consumption and growth story. Mehta said, with a growing middle class, one of the youngest populations in the world and rising internet penetration, India is poised for unprecedented growth.
On the highly inflationary scenario where raw material prices have risen in an unprecedented way, Mehta said the company takes price increases in a calibrated and judicious way to ensure that the entire cost is not passed on to the consumer.
Mehta said HUL is building an ‘intelligent enterprise’ and the HUL of the future will be a web of intelligent ecosystems — the consumer ecosystem, customer ecosystem, operations ecosystem with data, technology, and analytics at the core.
“Our core business will become smarter and efficient by becoming data-led and machine-augmented while we create customised platforms and ecosystems for differentiated consumer and customer value,” Mehta said.
