Enhancing Livelihoods through Project Shakti

Project Shakti enables rural women in villages across India to nurture an entrepreneurial mindset and become financially independent.

In an attempt to provide regular income, these women entrepreneurs (called Shakti Ammas) are trained on the basic principles of distribution management and familiarisation with our company’s products. Their role enables them to sell HUL products to the small retail outlets in their immediate village as well as directly to the households within the community.

Our team of Rural Sales Promoters (RSPs) coach these Shakti women entrepreneurs in rural India by familiarising them with HUL products to manage their businesses better. This includes basics and troubleshooting, as well as enhancing their soft skills of negotiation and communication.

Evolution of the initiative

We continue to empower our Shakti entrepreneurs and have been able to raise the standard of living for the local communities. We help impart training to Shakti entrepreneurs in sales, marketing and accounting by recruiting and training sales agents from villages.

With the integration of technology, incentives to Shakti entrepreneurs are now directly transferred to their banks, helping them enter the formal banking segment.

For the last one and half years, we have also partnered with an Indian adhesive company to sell their products through our Shakti network. This, in turn, has helped generate increased revenue for our Shakti entrepreneurs.

Resilience during COVID-19

Project Shakti embraces HUL’s philosophy of ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’ – A philosophy that has been extended even during the unprecedented times of COVID-19.

With travel restrictions interrupting the distribution and affecting the timelines of our operations, our key challenge was to service Shakti entrepreneurs in remote areas. To ensure uninterrupted supply of stock to our Shakti entrepreneurs, the HUL regional sales team and distributors implemented innovative ways of demand capture and fulfilment for the Shakti Channel. We immediately switched to taking orders via tele-calling and ensured that rural demand for essential products was captured effectively.

Looking after the wellbeing of all of our stakeholders

The rural salesmen were also provided hygiene kits, were trained on best hygiene practices, and a COVID-19 care package was included in their medical insurance policy. The rural salesmen also extended their support to Shakti entrepreneurs by going beyond their traditional roles of capturing demand, driving awareness on handwashing and maintaining proper hygiene. We also set up a mobile application with a daily monitoring process to ensure their wellbeing.

Overall impact

At the end of 2020, we have nearly 1,36,000 Shakti entrepreneurs spread across 18 states. Project Shakti has helped generate income by selling our products and has created a great impact on the livelihoods of women. Thus, not only helping them improve their confidence and self-esteem by gaining selling skills and enhancing their communication skills, but it has also helped build, as well as foster an entrepreneurial mindset amongst the women Shakti entrepreneurs.

Adapting the Shakti model to explore new ideas, we have launched similar programmes across Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Columbia. As we enter 2021, Team Shakti continues its journey of empowering more rural women and driving consistent growth.