Unilever’s ambition is to deliver long term sustainable growth while reducing environmental footprint and increasing its social impact. The company's ethos can be summed up in the goal of ‘Making Sustainable Living Commonplace’.

Globally, more than 1 Billion people live in slums and this number is rapidly growing. Unfortunately, slums have the challenge of limited access to safe toilets and drinking water causing serious health implications and over 829,000 deaths per year. Unilever has been bringing access to hygiene and sanitation for all, but with no infrastructure in the slums, this was a challenge.

The objective was to develop a sustainable and scalable solution which addresses sanitation challenges in slums and inspire a behaviour change towards hygiene and regularising healthy habits.

We helped Unilever develop a first-of-its-kind brand experience shifting their focus from products to services – the Suvidha (Hindi word for convenience) Centres. The Suvidha Centre is an innovative, self-sustaining, community hygiene centre, providing access to toilets, drinking water, showers, and laundromats in the heart of the slum. Each centre also doubles as Unilever's largest product experience centre making Unilever’s brands synonymous with sanitation and personal hygiene across touchpoints through the user journey. For as low as $0.01 per day, each centre runs self-sustainably, and is inclusively designed for women, children, elderly and persons with disabilities, ensuring no-one is left behind. They are open 24x7, brightly lit for safety and operated by women.

The centres are purpose-built and developed through a unique public-private partnership under Unilever's initiative, with the Government of Mumbai and HSBC. We further reinforce these centres with behaviour change programs about personal hygiene within the community.