“We will invest in India to protect the leadership position we have. We really believe that the next decade is a decade of India. We enjoy a privileged position there. And we believe that it will be a key contributor to the growth story of Unilever,” he said.
The London-headquartered company, which has India as its second-largest market, has accelerated strongly, Fernandez said.
On its emerging markets performance, Fernandez said India led the way and delivered a strong broad-based performance.
“We have achieved record market share in both laundry and hair, that are our two biggest categories there. In the case of laundry, we are growing more than 5 per cent above the average of the market,” he said.
The management at Hindustan Unilever guided that its EBITDA margins will remain at their current levels. Srinivas Phatak, chief financial officer at Unilever, told investors that it is the right approach.
“From our perspective, we ideally want to see India as a high single-digit growth market. And if we can have the bottom line grow slightly ahead of the top line, I think that it’s really a virtuous circle, which then serves the business in India as well as the group very well,” Phatak added.
