Hindustan Unilever Limited

Seven out of Nifty's fifty stocks hit their respective fifty-two-week lows on Monday.

Reliance Industries, Jio Financial Services, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Consumer Products, Tata Motors, Hindustan Unilever, and Wipro in the Nifty fifty were trading at their respective fifty-two-week lows, a Business Standard report said, adding that these stocks have fallen up to thirty-eight percent so far in calendar year twenty twenty-six against a thirteen percent decline in the Nifty fifty.

Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors' net investment in the last decade or ten years is now close to zero, according to a report from Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

Outflows of fifty-six billion dollars from Indian equities in the last two calendar years have offset their cumulative inflows since calendar year two thousand nineteen, says that report.

In today's conversation, we'll explore the changing counterfeiting and, and piracy landscape, the role of emerging technology such as AI, data analytics, blockchain, and track and trace, and how stronger collaboration between industry, enforcement agencies, customs, and online platforms can support more effective IP protection.

Our guest for this topic today is Dr. Vivek Mittal, chairman of the CII Task Force on Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy, and Executive Director, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Hindustan Unilever Limited.

With over 25 years of experience across leading organizations, Dr. Mittal brings extensive expertise in legal, ethics, compliance, data privacy, and corporate affairs.

So thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Mittal.

Uh, and good to, good to see you on other side.

Uh, I'm, I'm all ready to share my perspective on this, on this important topic.

This topic is very important for HUL, certainly, and also for our country, as you just alluded.

So happy to share my thoughts, whatever I can, uh, through this forum.

ICICI Bank, many of you here are products of ICICI.

Hindustan Unilever is another very good example.

Infosys, where they invested early, went to campus and really built legal functions and legal teams built for purpose.

That's going to become an important model and I think it's going to be important for more and more legal functions to do that.

The major buying was largely seen in FMCG sectors, auto and financial sectors.

In FMCG sectors, stocks such as Tata consumers, Nestle, hindustan unilever and itc gains around two percent while in banking side access bank and sbi bank were the key gainers on the other hand the it stocks were remain under pressure with vipro tcs infosys and tech mindra fall by one to two percent market are closely watching the us fed trade decisions which is scheduled on 16th of september at 11 pm while crude oil and uh elevated crude oils remain a key concern for the market.

Overall, value buying and strengthening in the key domestic sectors has helped the nifty to recover from the negative opening, although the broader market remains subdued relatively.

Thank you.

You buy or you tend to go towards a company like Larsen.

And when it is spending more on consumption, you tend to go towards a company like Hindustan Unilever because the government is telling you that that is the thrust of where I want to spend the money.

Top three or top five countries abhi konse ho rahe hai aapke emerging markets mein basis this? If you think about emerging markets as a whole, there are four big countries, right? Korea, Taiwan, China, and India.

TSMC stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which is one of the largest chip manufacturing companies in the world to manufacture these chips.

Uh, so tw-2000 to 2010, right, which was the first decade of this millennium, uh, 2003 to '7, there was a lot of capital spending happening in the country, right? How crazy amounts of money was being spent.

So it was a lost decade for lever, right? 2000 to 2010, the lever stock went nowhere.

Blue chip stock, right? Hindustan Unilever didn't go anywhere.

And Larsen probably went up four or five times or whatever that number was.

That gave the company greater control over its costs and product development.

And this difference shows up in the numbers because Hindustan Unilever acquired a 90.5% stake in Minimalist for 2,955 crore rupees in 2025, giving the young skincare brand an exit at almost the same valuation Sugar commanded at its peak.

Minimalist had also reached profitability with revenue of 347 crore rupees and profit of about 10.8 crore rupees in FY24.

So Sugar's valuation collapse offers a useful lesson for India's consumer startup ecosystem.

And the third is, do you have a holistic view of the ecosystem? So I'll give you an example.

So when we had a soft ring in Hindustan Lever, we didn't know how to sell it, honestly, because our distribution was led by understanding from soaps, detergents, tea, etc.,

I

actually went to Mr. Krishna Swami, who used to run Campakola in Chennai.

understand your sense on this situation.

Yeah, that's a valid point.

And this is, I think, one of the reasons why Hindustan Lever stopped being a good company.

Because what happened in Hindustan Lever around the 2000s was every manager who took on a new job, the first year he would spend cursing his predecessor.