HUL Meets Maharashtra Distributors Amid Threat To Intensify Boycott

A store attendant sits in front of bottles of Hindustan Unilever’s Dove shampoo and Fair & Lovely beauty products in Mumbai. (Photographer: Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg)

Hindustan Unilever Ltd.'s executives met distributors of its tea to soaps in Maharashtra after the bulk dealers warned to intensify boycott of the company's products over better pricing offered to large and online peers.

“In response to the request we had received from the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation, company representatives met them to understand their concerns about the evolving route-to-market models,” a spokesperson at the maker of Dove soap said in an emailed statement to BloombergQuint.

“As an organisation committed to the highest level of customer centricity, HUL will make all the efforts to address any specific issue bilaterally with its distributors to mutual satisfaction,” the spokesperson said. “Our distributors have overwhelmingly conveyed to us that they would continue to meet the needs of our shoppers in an uninterrupted manner.”

That comes days after the Maharashtra Consumer Products Distributors Federation said it has decided to stop supplying HUL's Kissan range of products from Jan. 1 due to the company's “refusal to engage with them on their concerns”.

Traditional distributors, or general trade, who dominate India's retail supply chain with nearly 90% share, have been protesting low margin and differential product pricing than supplies made by manufacturers to large business-to-business or organised wholesale stores such as Udaan, Metro Cash & Carry and JioMart.

The all-India lobby, with 4 lakh distributors as members across the nation and the parent of the Maharashtra federation, had written to about 24 consumer goods companies to look into the issues that are causing distress to offline distributors. It had earlier told BloombergQuint that protests will not be withdrawn until demands are met.

BloombergQuint awaits response to queries sent to AICPDF.

The distributors' body stopped supplying select goods by Colgate-Palmolive India Ltd. in Maharashtra. It has now threatened to take the protest to more states, including Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, if the toothpaste maker doesn't come forward to hear distributors' concerns, Dhairyashil Patil, president of the lobby, had said earlier.