HUL Q3: Urban demand reviving, worst is over, says Chairman Sanjiv Mehta

With supply-side constraints taken care of, any demand stimulus offered by Budget 2021 will prove beneficial for the industry, said the Chairman and MD of the FMCG major

Maryam Farooqui

January 28, 2021 / 11:25 AM IST

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Urban demand has reached a positive territory and is now in the right direction, said Sanjiv Mehta, Managing Director and Chairman of Hindustan Unilever (HUL) while announcing the December quarter results of the consumer goods major.

It was urban demand that was the hardest hit due to coronavirus outbreak.

"In the last (September) quarter, urban demand was in negative territory but in the last three months, it has turned positive albeit at lower levels. And now it is in the right direction. The urban demand will increase, depending on the mobility which depends on vaccine rollout," said Mehta.

Now that there are no supply-side constraints any stimulus in demand in the upcoming Budget will help.

Talking about rural demand, Mehta said it has proven to be resilient and is seeing double-digit growth as (COVID-19) infection rates have been much lower and rural has not been impacted due to lack of mobility.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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