Hindustan Unilever Limited

What does Hindustan Unilever own?

HUL owns more than 50 brands across home care, beauty, personal care, and foods, including Surf Excel, Lifebuoy, Lux, Lakmé, Dove, Horlicks, Kissan, and Kwality Wall's. Nineteen of its brands each generate over ₹1,000 crore in annual turnover. It acquired the D2C skincare brand Minimalist in 2025.

Is Hindustan Unilever publicly traded?

Yes. HUL trades on the National Stock Exchange of India under HINDUNILVR and on the Bombay Stock Exchange under 500696. It is a constituent of the Nifty 50 index.

Who founded Hindustan Unilever?

No single founder exists; the company began as Lever Brothers India Limited in 1933, a subsidiary of Britain's Lever Brothers, and merged with Indian firms in 1956 to become Hindustan Lever. It adopted its current name in 2007.

Where is Hindustan Unilever headquartered?

The company is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, at the Unilever House campus in the Andheri district. It was founded in Bombay and has remained Mumbai-based throughout its history.

How many brands does Hindustan Unilever own?

HUL manages a portfolio of more than 50 brands, concentrated under its Power Brands strategy on roughly 35 core properties. Around 19 brands each exceed ₹1,000 crore in annual turnover.

Who owns Hindustan Unilever?

Unilever PLC owns approximately 61.9 percent of HUL, making it the controlling parent. The remaining shares trade publicly on Indian exchanges held by institutions and retail investors.

Is Hindustan Unilever related to Unilever?

HUL is a separately listed subsidiary of Unilever PLC, the British consumer goods group. HUL operates Unilever's India business, localizes global brands, and owns India-specific properties such as Lakmé, Surf Excel, and Horlicks.

Lever Brothers established an Indian subsidiary in 1933, incorporating Lever Brothers India Limited in Bombay at the height of the British Raj. The company began manufacturing soap in India early on, and in 1956 merged with Hindustan Vanaspati Manufacturing Company and United Traders to form Hindustan Lever Limited, the name it carried for half a century.

The company's growth tracked India's economic history. Under the License Raj era it localized nearly all production, developing India-specific products such as the low-cost Wheel detergent for hand washing. The 1990s brought liberalization and a landmark 1996 merger with the Tata Group's Tata Oil Mills, which brought in Lakmé-adjacent personal care brands and expanded its foods business. In 1998 it bought the Lakmé cosmetics brand outright from the Tatas for approximately ₹200 crore.

The 2000s reshaped the portfolio around its Power Brands strategy, concentrating investment on roughly 35 flagship properties. In 2007 the company renamed itself Hindustan Unilever Limited to align with the global parent. The 2020 merger with GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, India's largest consumer goods deal at approximately ₹31,700 crore, added Horlicks, Boost, and Maltova and made HUL the country's largest foods and refreshment company.

Recent history centers on portfolio modernization. In January 2025 HUL agreed to acquire direct-to-consumer skincare brand Minimalist for approximately ₹2,955 crore, its largest deal since Horlicks, completed in 2025. It also took stakes in wellness brands OZiva and Wellbeing Nutrition. Under CEO Priya Nair, appointed August 2025 after Rohit Jawa's tenure, the company has pushed toward premiumization and digital commerce channels while managing rural demand softness.

For fiscal 2025, ended March 31, 2025, the company reported turnover of ₹60,680 crore, up 2 percent, with EBITDA margin of 23.5 percent and profit after tax of ₹10,644 crore, up 5 percent. Beauty and Wellbeing grew 3 percent, led by double-digit hair care growth.

HUL publishes Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting disclosures required by Indian regulation and participates in Unilever's global sustainability framework. Parent Unilever is an RSPO member for sustainable palm oil and holds validated science-based targets for emissions reduction, commitments that flow down to HUL operations.

Notable HUL-level programs include water conservation commitments, plastic waste collection partnerships under extended producer responsibility rules, and rural hygiene programs through Lifebuoy's handwashing campaigns, among the largest behavior-change programs in global public health marketing. The company reports that plastic collection has exceeded plastic use in packaging in recent years, a self-reported figure.

The company's fair-skin legacy attracted sustained criticism. Its Fair and Lovely cream, for decades India's largest skin-lightening product, was renamed Glow and Lovely in 2020 after global scrutiny of colorism marketing. Critics noted the rename addressed the name rather than the product category, which HUL continues to sell.

HUL is consistently ranked among India's most valuable companies by market capitalization and among the country's most admired employers in independent surveys. It has topped Nielsen and industry rankings for FMCG leadership and routinely appears in the Fortune India 500 and Economic Times awards for corporate excellence.

Its brands collect frequent industry recognition: Surf Excel, Lifebuoy, and Lux hold some of the highest household penetration scores measured by Kantar's Brand Footprint reports, and multiple HUL brands rank among India's most-chosen consumer brands annually.

HUL's most significant environmental controversy involved a former thermometer factory in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, where mercury contamination from operations that ended in 2001 drew years of activism and litigation. The company settled remediation obligations with regulators and workers, with cleanup completed under monitoring and worker settlements finalized after prolonged dispute.

Competition regulators have periodically examined FMCG pricing practices industry-wide. The company has also faced scrutiny over plastic packaging volumes under India's extended producer responsibility framework, though no major penalties have been recorded.

The Fair and Lovely controversy, while settled as a branding matter in 2020, remains a case study in global media coverage of colorism in advertising. HUL has publicly committed to dropping whitening terminology across its portfolio while retaining the underlying product line.