Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India is revolutionising industries. This disruption can be attributed to rapid penetration and large-scale adoption of digital backbones such as the internet, handheld computers, digital public infrastructure and private sector investments in technology. Leveraging these factors and government initiatives like the National AI Mission, India is poised to become an innovator and a key player in the responsible and scalable adoption of AI.
A notable impact is also being seen in the FMCG space. From demand forecasting and supply chain optimisation to personalised marketing and consumer insights, AI is enhancing operational efficiency and user engagement. At Hindustan Unilever Limited, we are uniquely positioned to pioneer the efficient and effective use of AI across our value chain while delivering meaningful benefits. Our Intelligent Enterprise is a hive of data and machine augmentation, a window into creating an ecosystem that seamlessly connects and stitches together our customer, consumer, and operations spaces with data, tech, and analytics.
It starts with the consumer
Today, consumer touchpoints are omnichannel. Our increasingly connected and informed consumers continue to be demanding multiple complex decisions in a short window of opportunity with heightened expectations and interlinked shopping journey.
At HUL, we reduce the problem across the 6Ps.
Starting with ‘Product’, HUL’s own Agile Innovation Hub is a one-stop phygital centre for continuous trend spotting, rapidly translating ideas into prototypes through digital simulations and real-time consumer feedback. Our AI-powered content hubs help marketers not just identify the best product proposition, but also virtually test the path from discovery to purchase across consumer cohorts.
Moving on to Price, Place and Promotion, it is equally important that we also bring efficiencies to our media and trade deployment. AI has found a home in our platforms like Sangam and eNRM, which provide market-mix modelling capabilities to optimise media campaigns intelligently. Crunching terabytes of internal and external data with every run, AI helps identify hidden patterns in consumer media consumption, ensuring our marketers always know how to reach the right audience on the right channels at the right frequency with the right value unlocked.
Marketers are increasingly leveraging AI to further package the right message at the right time to work on people and presentation. With capabilities like Consumer 360 and Content Supply Chain millions of our consumer interactions are now offering a means to build virtual consumer twins and to leverage AI to generate content tailored to each persona while keeping in sync with brand personalities, latest trends and right creative benchmarks.
Lastly, we continue to innovate across consumer journeys and channels to offer hyper-personalisation while enhancing convenience and engagement. AI-powered assistants like TY (TRESemmé’s virtual hair stylist) and home-grown product LUMI (Lakmé’s AI beauty advisor) deliver rich virtual experiences, intelligent product suggestions, and a truly content-to-commerce consumer experience. This is more than a digital upgrade; it is a reinvention of how we innovate, connect, and grow in a consumer-centric world.
Intelligent customer landscape
Digital disruption is not just limited to the consumer landscape but to every spoke of HUL’s retail distribution juggernaut. India’s retail landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. As technology reshapes consumer behaviour, the path to purchase now spans multiple channels, devices, and moments. From hyper-local commerce to the rise of quick commerce, the rules of customer-consumer engagement are being rewritten.
In an increasingly digital world, our customer ecosystem lies at the core of a future-ready HUL. Significant AI-led disruptions in the distribution landscape have motivated us to build competitive strengths across demand capture, demand generation, and demand fulfilment, amplified by advanced data analytics.
Shikhar, today, stands as India’s largest eB2B platform. Steadily, it has grown in influence and is on its way to becoming retailers’ go-to application. What began as a digital ordering tool has evolved into a powerful marketing engine. In 2025, Shikhar introduced Generative AI, enabling retailers to create promotional videos from a single photo, free of cost. With over 1 lakh AI-generated ads, it has become a vital part of the retailer’s toolkit, transforming static WhatsApp forwards into dynamic, community-driven campaigns, while maintaining authentic connections.
Envision, HUL’s proprietary AI capability, leverages image recognition capabilities to improve retail intelligence. By seamlessly integrating with HUL’s flagship platforms, Shikhar and SalesEDGE, it processes ~2.5 crore images every month to measure and suggest improvements for on-shelf availability, merchandising hygiene and competitive intelligence. It helps field teams and retailers make smarter decisions, faster, driving precision, speed, and consistency across retail touchpoints.
Digital retail is also receiving an AI boost via Canvas, enabling channel teams to generate and validate smarter content, while helping optimise performance media spends across channels to increase ROI and improve system reliability. This has resulted in massive cost savings across the channel, allowing for spending improvements to enhance profitability across e-com and q-com.
These tools are not just digital, they’re transformational, helping retailers grow their business while staying connected to evolving consumer needs.
Smarter operations via an agile backbone
As we wire up the front end for demand generation, we are also building capabilities to ensure superior fulfilment. We are undertaking a transformative overhaul of our supply chain, driving agility, resilience, and sustainable growth through an integrated, digital-first approach.
Re-engineering our warehouse and distribution systems, Samadhan enables retailers in select cities using Shikhar to get their orders as quickly as the next day. This agility not only accelerates order fulfilment but also expands the virtual assortment available to end consumers at their local Kirana stores.
HUL is transitioning to a fully integrated digital manufacturing network ensuring real-time visibility, seamless coordination, and enhanced agility. Through the introduction of Nano Factories, HUL is enabling small-batch production, offering greater flexibility and responsiveness to dynamic market needs—all while maintaining operational excellence at scale.
This operational intelligence ensures we deliver the right product, at the right time, in the right place.
At the heart of this transformation is our flagship innovation “Nerve Center”—a connected, AI powered, intelligent system that unifies Plan, Source, Make, and Deliver into a single, real-time operational flow. Acting as the brain of HUL’s supply chain operations, it will empower the organisation to unlock tangible business value through data-driven agility and recommendations in response to external and internal disruptions.
Unlocking possibilities: tools, learning & growth at the fingertips
What powers this transformation at HUL? It’s not just vision—it’s access.
We are equipped with cutting-edge tools and platforms giving our teams the freedom to explore, experiment, and innovate at scale.
Backed by a culture of continuous learning and access to cutting-edge tools, HUL is not just adapting to change—it’s shaping it. That’s why we’ve partnered with leading online academies like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and more—so our people can build indispensable skills in AI, machine learning, data science, and beyond.
As AI continues to evolve, we remain committed to leading with purpose, precision, and people at the core.