Released on: September 29, 2008, 5:35 am

Press Release Author: Finesse PR

Industry: Education

Press Release Summary: Mr. Sudhanshu Vats, Vice President, Home-care at Hindustan
Unilever Limited (HUL) conducted a marketing workshop at the IIM Lucknow on 26th
September 2008, Friday. The three hour long session on “Challenges involved in the
launch and development of a new product” provided the students at IIM Lucknow a
great opportunity to learn the key insights in the field of marketing.



Press Release Body: Marketing workshop by Mr. Sudhanshu Vats at IIM Lucknow

Mr. Sudhanshu Vats, Vice President, Home-care at Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)
conducted a marketing workshop at the IIM Lucknow on 26th September 2008, Friday.
The three hour long session on “Challenges involved in the launch and development of
a new product” provided the students at IIM Lucknow a great opportunity to learn the
key insights in the field of marketing.

Mr. Vats started the session with a live case study that involved finding the
strategy to revive the market share for VIM in the Utensil Cleaners market – the
development that initiated HUL to launch Vim Liquid in the market. Today, the
company enjoys leadership position in the Utensil Cleaners market. The students
formed a group of eight and analyzed the case from different perspectives to arrive
at different strategies that came very close to the actual strategies employed by
HUL.

Supplementing the case study with his insights, Mr. Vats explained HUL’s strategy of
targeting rural and urban consumers separately. Although it is mostly the consumers
in urban sector who were responsible for the high sales of VIM bar, management at
HUL realized that it is the rural market that has more potential for growth in the
future. It faced the biggest challenge from the popularity of ash and powder in the
rural sector. It was not easy to enter into this market especially because of the
easy availability of ash in villages. Mr. Vats explained that HUL decided to
establish strategy of lowering the input costs to arrive at a low cost VIM bar for
rural sector consumers.

Seeing that the future of liquid cleaners is promising in urban sector, Mr. Vats
explained the reasons which led to the launch of a new product ‘VIM Liquid’. Sharing
the secret of this successful launch, he explained how HUL identified and overcame
barriers that existed in the minds of consumers. The perception that the liquid
cleaner is not strong enough was cleared by the tag line that one drop is sufficient
to clean a good number of utensils. Also, to ensure the cost efficiency of the
product, an innovative bottle cap was introduced that only allowed drop by drop
usage.

Mr. Vats then shared the successful market results achieved by HUL and concluded the
workshop with the encouraging feedback on the case analysis by students. The
audience was highly enlightened by his insights and thanked him for the successful
workshop.



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