.......a journey called life

This is what my wife bought from India in the name of cosmetics...

Unilever India:

So, as we see, P&G India is a relatively new story if you compare it with Unilever India (having a long standing history since 1888). Lifebuoy came in 1895, for example :-) Even though Unilever was in India for long, it started operations only in 1931 when it set up its first Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Vanaspati Manufacturing Company, followed by Lever Brothers India Limited (1933) and United Traders Limited (1935). These three companies merged to form HLL in November 1956.If you see Unilever India's website, they boast of 35 Power Brands. Indeed, they are household names like Ponds, Lakme, Red Label, Surf Excel etc. Its interesting to see how they grew so large. Brooke Bond was present in India since 1900. Lipton since 1898, Ponds since 1947. Unilever acquired Brooke Bond in 1984, Lipton in 1972 and Ponds in 1986. TOMCO (with Brands like Magic, OK) merged with HLL in 1993. Lakme (which was set up in 1952 by Tata Group on the request of then Prime Minister Pt Jawaharlal Nehru) and HLL formed a 50:50 joint venture in 1995 and finally in 1998, Lakme sold its brands to HLL. In 1994, HLL formed a 50:50 joint venture with Kimberly Clark and started marketing Huggies and Kotex in India. Kissan was also bought from UB Group in 1993.

I also had a look at Unilever and P&G's financials for last 5 years at Reuters and I found some interesting observations:

1) P&G sales were at $ 40 billion as against Unilever's sales of $ 48.3 biliion in 2002
2) In 2006, P&G sales were at $ 68 billion as compared to $ 39.6 billion of Unilever.
3) Operating Income: Unilever moved from $ 5 billion to $ 5.4 billion, P&G moved from 6.6 to 13.2 (DOUBLED)
4) Normalized net profit to common shares (excluding exceptional items): Unilever moved from $ 1.9 billion to $ 2.9 billion; P&G moved from $ 5 billion to $ 8.7 billion

Last five years have been pretty bad for Unilever but I noticed something which sparks a light - Selling, General & Admin Expenses for Unilever has declined steadily from $ 18 billion to $ 13.9 billion from 2002-06 while for P&G, it has soared from $ 10.4 billion to $ 21.8 billion! I am not making any predictions here but sure enough, something is going on there. But being here at P&G, I can assure you that whatever is going out there, it will be fine as a lot is going on here as well :-)

My Final review is scheduled in 2 weeks and whether I become a full time pgite depends on how I fare! Pray for me!