The company has identified Gen Z as one of the key structural shifts creating what it calls “New India”.
“These consumers are absolutely changing India,” HUL said, pointing to the 377 million Gen Z consumers in the country.
But HUL is not treating India as a single Gen Z marketWhile Gen Z represents a major structural shift, HUL’s broader consumer strategy is built around increasingly differentiated groups.
HUL’s broader point is that India is becoming increasingly fragmented, with different consumers discovering and consuming products in different ways.
For the company, Gen Z is therefore not simply another demographic to market to.
Hindustan Unilever (HUL) believes India’s 377 million Gen Z consumers are emerging as a structural force that will reshape the way consumer goods are discovered, consumed and purchased, with social media, creators and new consumption occasions increasingly influencing brand demand.
The company has identified Gen Z as one of the key structural shifts creating what it calls “New India”. HUL said this cohort is changing not just what consumers buy, but also how they discover categories and how they consume them.
“These consumers are absolutely changing India,” HUL said, pointing to the 377 million Gen Z consumers in the country. The company said the impact would be felt across CPG consumption as the cohort changes category discovery, purchase behaviour and consumption patterns.
Read: HUL’s Gen Z bet: 30,000 creators, 500 messages and a social-first demand engine
That shift is already visible in categories where social media is helping create new consumption behaviours. In hair care, for instance, HUL said the market is moving beyond basic shampoo consumption towards conditioners, masks, styling and treatment products. The number of hair straighteners in Indian homes has risen to 1.6 times, with the company attributing part of this change to social media.
The company’s approach to marketing is changing accordingly. HUL said it is building a “social first demand engine” and making its brands “more modern, more contemporary, more youthful”. It currently reaches 30,000 creators in India, while 60% of its spends are now on digital. The company is also building AI-enabled content studios.
From influencers to a creator-led demand engine
For HUL, influencer marketing is no longer simply about adding a celebrity or creator to an advertising campaign. The company is building a much broader creator ecosystem around its brands.
HUL said it has an ecosystem of more than 30,000 digital content creators, spread across its portfolio and across the changing media landscape—from traditional television to connected TV, digital and social platforms.
The company is also moving away from the traditional mass-marketing model of one message delivered to a very large audience over an extended period. At the premium end, HUL described a model in which a brand can have almost 500 messages, curated for thousands of different cohorts every month.
The objective is to create what HUL described as “compound branding”, with content and communication becoming increasingly tailored to different consumer groups and occasions.
Also read: HUL CEO Priya Nair breaks silence on Beco ad row: ‘Our products are completely safe’
This is particularly relevant as consumer behaviour becomes more fragmented. HUL said India cannot be treated as one homogeneous market and that different consumer groups and geographies require different propositions, channels and forms of communication.
Gen Z is also changing what brands need to stand for
HUL’s emphasis on younger consumers is also visible in how it is developing and repositioning brands.
Vaseline, for example, is being taken into newer formats and spaces, including Vaseline Gluta-H entering face care and Vaseline CloudSoft entering lip care. HUL described these innovations as “intrinsically social first”, while retaining the brand’s trust and science credentials.
Its Kissan strategy is another example. HUL described the brand’s chutney campaign as intrinsically social, with chefs and people online demonstrating new ways to use the product. The company sees these flavour hacks and new use cases as particularly relevant to younger consumers.
In beauty and wellbeing, HUL said Liquid I.V., which it described as a highly loved Gen Z hydration brand in the US and other markets, was brought to India and “very quickly” became a go-to brand for Gen Z.
HUL also highlighted Simple, its skincare brand, which has scaled 10 times since its launch in India and crossed ₹200 crore in annual recurring revenue. The company attributed the growth to differentiated positioning around sensitive skin, a “Gen Z first” consumer community-building approach and a strong omnichannel playbook.
But HUL is not treating India as a single Gen Z market
While Gen Z represents a major structural shift, HUL’s broader consumer strategy is built around increasingly differentiated groups.
The company describes consumers through the lenses of “democratizers” and “premiumizers”. Democratizers represent an opportunity to increase consumption and usage—for example, by increasing the number of shampoo wash occasions. Premiumizers, meanwhile, are consumers seeking additional benefits and willing to trade up in price per millilitre.
Large towns offer opportunities to add new users and create markets, while large cities and online channels provide opportunities for new formats, masstige and prestige offerings. HUL stressed that these groups are not neat, mutually exclusive segments, but overlapping consumer pools.
The company is tailoring brands accordingly. Clinic Plus is being focused on democratizers, particularly in rural India, while Dove is positioned towards premiumizers across the country, with particular opportunities in small towns and tier 4/rural markets. Nexus, meanwhile, is positioned entirely online.
Consumption is changing beyond Gen Z
HUL also pointed to another major consumer shift: the rising participation of women in the workforce. It said workforce participation among women has risen from around 23–25% to 43%, with much of the increase coming from rural India but also from urban areas.
According to HUL, when women enter the workforce, household behaviour changes—including cooking, chores, self-presentation and consumption. The company sees opportunities in convenience, time-saving products and cooking aids as a result.
The company also sees significant headroom in consumption among democratizers, arguing that increased frequency of usage can itself become a growth driver. At the other end, premiumisation is creating opportunities as consumers seek more benefits and trade up.
HUL’s broader point is that India is becoming increasingly fragmented, with different consumers discovering and consuming products in different ways. The company described the country as a “kaleidoscope” of millions of different Indias, with growth emerging across pin codes and consumer groups.
AI adds another layer to the marketing shift
HUL is pairing its social-first approach with greater use of AI across content and media.
The company said its AI-enabled tools can make content creation 50–75% faster and potentially reduce costs by 50–75%, while also enabling faster turnaround and greater effectiveness. It is also using AI alongside its proprietary data and media capabilities to improve real-time media deployment.
The result, according to HUL, is a marketing model that is moving from broad-reach communication towards a much more dynamic system of creators, cohorts, content, social listening and real-time media deployment.
For the company, Gen Z is therefore not simply another demographic to market to. Its emergence is part of a larger transformation in how Indian consumers discover categories, develop preferences, experiment with products and ultimately decide what enters their shopping baskets.
HUL’s response is to build brands that can remain culturally relevant across these rapidly changing consumer journeys—using creators, social platforms, differentiated propositions and AI to make its demand engine more responsive to the way consumers now behave.
First Published on September 8, 2026, 08:32:10 IST
