While laundry detergent brand Surf Excel crossed the $1-billion revenue mark last fiscal year, there are several other brands in the Hindustan Unilever stable that are becoming mini businesses in their own right by their sheer volume of sales and turnover.
Brooke Bond, for instance, is rapidly catching up to Surf with a revenue in excess of ₹5,000 crore in FY23.
Lifebuoy, Glow & Lovely, Dove, Ponds, Lux, Wheel, Vim, Rin, and Horlicks have over ₹2,000 crore of turnover (but less than ₹5,000 crore) each, while Lakme, Clinic Plus, CloseUp, Pears, Comfort, Kwality Walls, Bru and Kisan have revenues in the range of ₹1,000 crore to ₹2,000 crore.
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According to Sanjiv Mehta, the MD and CEO of Hindustan Unilever, the brands are getting bigger and more popular due to product innovations, their superiority over competing brands as well as their strong brand recall.
For instance, in the tea segment, the company could beat its nearest competitor with a wide margin and emerged as a market leader both in terms of value and volumes.
According to the FMCG major, some of its products such as Rin bar, Taj Mahal tea and Lifebuoy are twice superior to what they were in 2019.