Ladies and gentlemen, good day. Welcome to Hindustan Unilever Limited conference call for the results for March quarter and financial year ended 31st March 2023. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. An opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. A. Ravishankar, Group Controller and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Over to you now. Thank you, Tanvi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call of Hindustan Unilever Limited. We will be covering today the results of March quarter and financial year ended 31st March 2023. On the call with me is Sanjiv Mehta, CEO and Managing Director, Rohit Jawa, CEO Designate, and Ritesh Tiwari, CFO. We'll start the presentation with Sanjiv sharing an overview of our full year performance and the progress made on our strategic priorities. Ritesh will then cover our financial results and share the outlook. Before we get started with the presentation, I'd like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement included in the presentation for good order's sake. With that, over to you, Sanjiv. Thank you, Ravi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today, my 39th and final quarterly earnings call as the CEO of Hindustan Unilever. This also happens to be the ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for HUL. As always, it is a pleasure to interact with all of you. Let me begin with our full year results and progress on our strategic priorities. I'll hand it over to Ritesh, who can take you through our results and outlook in detail. This has been yet another year of strong and resilient performance. We grew our top line by 16%, significantly ahead of the market, and gained market share handsomely. In this fiscal alone, we added nearly INR 8,000 crores to our turnover, taking it to over INR 58,000 crores. I'm even more pleased with the 5% volume growth that we delivered in the context of FMCG market declining volumes. EBITDA margin for the year was at 23.4%. Profit after tax and earnings per share grew 13%. Despite the high levels of inflation, we managed the business dynamically. During the pandemic and at the beginning of the period of high inflation, we had articulated that our overarching objectives would be to grow our consumer franchise and protect our business model. I'm pleased that we have been able to deliver on both counts. We've had impressive market share gains, and our margins have remained healthy. Our solid performance is a testament to our clear and compelling strategy, backed by the strength of our biggest assets, our people and our brands. We not only navigated the short-term challenges with agility, but also made great progress on our long-term strategic priorities. Let me take you through some of the highlights of this fiscal. What a fabulous year this has been for our Home Care business. We delivered 28% revenue growth and grew volumes in near double digits despite the high inflation. Growth was led by our premium portfolio. To put in perspective, our Home Care business now has a turnover of over INR 21,000 crore, which is bigger than most FMCG businesses in India. Our laundry brand, Surf Excel, reached an important milestone this year. It became the first home and personal care brand to cross $1 billion turnover. This was achieved with a relentless focus on product superiority, driving market development and premiumization, and engaging consumers through iconic long-term engagement platform, Daag Achhe Hain. We have strengthened our role as a market maker in Indian FMCG industry. A fitting example is our Home Care liquids business. Through our consistent market development efforts, we have scaled the business to over INR 3,000 crores in this fiscal. Our dishwash brand, Vim, has been on a strong growth trajectory, expanding brand loyalty through innovation and purpose. The brand was recently recognized by Kantar for fastest consumer reach growth globally in the last decade. Beauty & Personal Care is another powerhouse business with a turnover exceeding INR 21,000 crores. We delivered a competitive growth of 12%. More importantly, we grew volumes despite a mid-single digit decline in market volumes. We continue to contemporize our core brands to keep them aspirational. Last year, LUX was relaunched with unique regional mixes. Since then the brand has been delivering stellar results. Our skincare brand, Pond's, has been leading the premiumization agenda with on-trend innovations and future formats. With a very strong performance, both these brands crossed INR 2,000 crores turnover. Excuse me. We now have five BPC brands, Dove, Lifebuoy, Glow & Lovely, Pond's, and LUX in our INR 2,000 crores club. We are transforming our portfolio and driving premiumization through innovation and entry into fast-growing demand spaces. During the year, we launched three new brands in the premium beauty space. You've already heard about Acne Squad, which is a specialist acne brand, and Find Your Happy Place, which is about experiential bath and body ranges. What you see on the left side of the chart is our new skincare brand, Novology. It is in the derma-therapeutic space. The brand includes clinically proven range of solutions created with experienced dermatologists to solve persistent skin concerns such as pigmentation, dry skin and acne. This year we also forayed into health and well-being category with strategic investments in OZiva and Wellbeing Nutrition. We are now providing support to scale these businesses further. We are moving rapidly in our transformation journey to premiumize our portfolio and meet emerging consumer needs. Our focus on market development premiumization enables us to grow our premium segment significantly ahead of the rest of the portfolio. Moving on to Foods & Refreshments, which is nearly a INR 15,000 crore business. Our revenue growth was 5% led by strong performance in ice cream, coffee, and foods. In Health Food Drinks, we steadfastly continued our focus on the fundamentals by building category relevance, educating the consumers about the benefits of HFD and driving a plus range by creating awareness for consumers through activation in home and in store, as well as by tying up with leading healthcare diagnostic chains. In the wake of high milk inflation, we piloted 3-in-1 ready mix variant of Horlicks to make a cup of Horlicks more affordable. Millet Chocolate Horlicks is a new addition to the Horlicks portfolio. It is made with multi millets like ragi, jowar, kangni and bajra, which are a natural source of calcium, iron, protein and fiber. As a result of action, we strengthened our consumer franchise, gaining market shares and penetration handsomely. In tea, we are the value and volume market leaders and have widened the gap versus our nearest competitor. Leveraging our WiMI strategy, we have been crafting unique blends for different parts of the country and driving premiumization. Our ice cream business delivered a stellar performance in this fiscal, led by a strategy to de-seasonalize ice cream consumption. We launched a wide range of innovations across the portfolio like Chuski, exciting flavors in Cornetto and ice cream tubs. We are leveraging our digital commerce platform, ICNow, to enable instant last mile delivery. In a span of 3 years, it has become 10% of our business. Talking about foods, we divested Salt and Atta business in line with our intent to exit non-core categories and focus on driving growth in the packaged foods business. Our jams and ketchup range continue to do well. We relaunched our brand Kissan with new packaging that highlights our deep connection with the farmers of India. Hellmann's mayonnaise and Kissan peanut butter are scaling up rapidly. Looking at this chart, it is quite obvious that we are a powerhouse of big purposeful brands. We have a total of 19 brands clocking over INR 1,000 crores each in annual turnover. Put together, these 19 brands account for over 80% of our turnover in this fiscal. At the top, we have Surf Excel and Pond's with more than INR 5,000 crores turnover each. We have nine brands in the INR 2,000 crores club, including LUX and Pond's, which have moved up the table. Our tally of INR 1,000 crore brands have increased to eight, with three more brands, Closeup, Pears, and Comfort joining the club. Consumers continue to be increasingly discerning, looking for highly superior products and making informed choices and demanding brands with a point of view. To serve consumer needs, we are creating more superior products, bringing the best of our marketing insights and R&D together. We continue to have 2x more superior products when compared versus 2019. Let me make it clear, this does not mean that the remaining of our products are inferior. It just means that they are at par with competition on functionality. We are weaving the magic of marketing in our campaigns to create brands that traverse the minds and hearts of our consumers. Our marketing campaigns have won many external accolades. Vim is deeply committed to championing the cause of everyone taking ownership for their own home chores. Its Unstereotype campaign won the Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards. The Vim Black campaign triggered a good response from our consumers. Dove continues to build on its Stop the Beauty Test platform and launched another award-winning campaign. Clearly, we are winning with the brands as a force for good, powered by purpose and innovation. Customers are an integral part of our value chain and play a crucial role in reaching our products to consumers across the country. We continue to partner with them for mutual growth. Our EB2B app, Shikhar, is providing retailers the convenience and flexibility to order online anytime and get faster service. Shikhar is one of the highest adopted EB2B app with over 1.2 million retail outlets. Through Shikhar, E-com and our 14 D2C websites, we now capture over 30% of our sales digitally. We are rewiring our demand fulfillment capabilities through automated warehouses and intelligent back-end systems. This action not only help us in demand capture and fulfillment, but also enable us to do demand generation in a very disruptive manner. Excellent execution is the bedrock of our winning with customers agenda. We have continuously stepped up our effort, effective coverage and assortment, which now stands at 1.2x of pre-COVID levels. Wherever a shopper wants to buy a product, we want to create an environment where our differentiated products would be appealing to the shoppers. That's where our focus of creating perfect stores comes in, whether it is offline or online. While we are a very large organization, selling over 60 billion units annually, our focus always has been to be the most nimble and agile. Our Agile Innovation Hub uses data and technology to pick up consumer trends and quickly launch new innovations by leveraging Unilever's world-class R&D capability. In the last fiscal, we launched over 60 SKUs through our Agile Innovation Hub platform. We are driving digitization across a large factory and bringing more agility in operations. One of the key parameters that we track in our factories is to measure the speed and agility is the days before the next run or what we call as a DBNR. For our A-class SKUs, that is our top SKUs, which contribute to 80% of our turnover, our DBNR is just 3.5 days. This means on an average, all our A-class SKUs are manufactured every third or fourth day. In order to cater to the need for niche premium products, we have set up seven nano factories. These are fully functioning mini production lines that house everything we need to produce a batch of final products. These nano factories enable us to manufacture niche products in a much more agile manner without impacting our cost efficiency. We are creating automated warehouses, which enable us to further improve our distribution and drive efficiencies in the value chain. We recently opened our new distribution center in Sumerpur, which houses state-of-the-art equipment, such as a fully automated storage and retrieval system, including stacker cranes, robotic palletizers, and rail-guided vehicles. Our mantra of doing well by doing good is very well ingrained across our business. Even in very challenging circumstances, we have continued to make strong progress on our sustainability agenda across the pillars of climate, nature, and social. We are decarbonizing operations and have achieved 97% reduction in CO₂ emissions per ton of production across our manufacturing operations when compared against our 2008 baseline. We are plastic neutral since 2021. That is for calendar year 2021 and 2022, we collected and safely disposed more plastic than what we use in packaging of our products. Excuse me. Through the Hindustan Unilever Foundation, we are supporting amplifying scalable solutions to help address India's water challenges. Till date, the foundation has delivered a cumulative and collective water potential of over 2.6 trillion L across thousands of villages. We are committed to a deforestation-free supply chain. In this fiscal, 95% of our paper and board in packaging, 82% of our tomatoes, and 69% of tea came from sustainable sources. Talking about our social initiatives with Prabhat, our community development program, we have reached over 9 million people in last 9 years to improve livelihood, health, nutrition, and environment of communities near our factories. We launched Project Shakti as a pilot in early 2000. Today the program empowers around 1.9 lakh women entrepreneurs by enhancing their livelihoods and promoting financial independence. To guide our ESG strategy and agenda, we have also created an ESG committee of our board this year. As I get ready to hand over my responsibilities after nearly 10 years at the helm of HUL, I go with a huge amount of satisfaction and pride in what we have achieved collectively. In the last 10 years, we have added nearly INR 33,000 crores as delta turnover and over INR 9,500 crores as delta EBITDA. Our business today has never been more stronger in terms of size, scale, profitability, capabilities, and its impact on the country and society. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your warmth and tremendous support to HUL and to me in the last 10 years. It seems like it was just the other day that I was introducing myself to you. Before I hand over to Ritesh to take you through our results in detail, I want to introduce my friend, my colleague, and a fabulous leader, Rohit Jawa, who will succeed me as the new CEO and Managing Director. I am sure you will continue to extend your support to him and to HUL in the same way as you did during my tenure. Rohit, you may want to say a few words to our friends on the call. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Sanjiv, for your kind words and the welcome. I'm deeply honored and privileged to join this great business and the HUL family. I'm really looking forward to meeting you all and working with you. Thank you. Thank you very much and look forward more times together. Thank you, Sanjiv. Thank you, Rohit, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now walk you through our performance in more detail and cover our outlook. Starting with the operating environment, this year, FMCG industry witnessed unprecedented inflation across a wide basket of commodities. Lately, we have seen commodities correct from their peaks. Inflation moderated on a year-on-year basis with easing in some of the commodities and lacking of high prices in the base period. Most of you would be familiar with the chart on the right. Let me reiterate. The blue bars represent maximum and minimum price range of commodities in last 10 years, and the pink line is their 10-year median. The red and yellow symbols represent average prices for this fiscal and March quarter respectively. As you can see from the chart, all commodities except tea are significantly above their median prices. Clearly, the worst of inflation is behind, but inflation has not gone away. As we had anticipated and called out earlier, the slowdown in FMCG market is bottoming out. This improvement was led by volumes which have turned flat in this quarter versus a mid-single-digit decline in December quarter. FMCG market is still showing a very high price growth of 11%. We expect this to go down as Nielsen starts to pick up price corrections taken by us and the industry. Talking about FMCG market growth from an urban and rural lens, urban markets continue to lead the growth for FMCG. Rural has shown some signs of improvement with higher value growth sequentially. While volumes continue to decline, the extent of decline has reduced versus last quarter. In this context, HUL delivered yet another quarter of strong all-round performance. Our turnover grew 11% with underlying volume growth of 4%. Growth was competitive with more than 75% of the business winning market shares. EBITDA margin at 23.7% remained healthy and improved 10 basis points sequentially. Let me cover EBITDA in a bit more detail in subsequent slide. Moving to our bottom line, profit after tax before exceptional items at INR 2,471 crores was up 8%. Net profit at INR 2,552 crores increased 10% year-on-year. Gains from sale of property and brands largely explain the higher net profit growth as compared to PAT BI growth. Talking about gross margin, the unprecedented inflation that FMCG industry witnessed this year resulted in two things. Number one, pressure on gross margin, and number two, reduction in media intensity. In the last results update, we had called out that with softening in commodities, our focus is to build back gross margin and step up A&P investments. If you look at March quarter results, we have improved our gross margin sequentially by 120 basis points and increased our A&P investments by 80 basis points. We will continue to focus on building back gross margins and stepping up A&P investments in coming quarters as well. Moving on to performance across our three segments. Home Care delivered yet another quarter of standout performance and grew 19%. Beauty & Personal Care delivered broad-based 10% growth. Foods & Refreshment grew 3%. Margins in all three segments remain healthy with Home Care at 19%, BPC at 26%, and F&R at 18%. We will click down to talk about performance within each of the division in subsequent slides. Starting with some of our key innovations for this quarter. Sanjiv spoke about our new master skincare brand, Novology. Created with experienced dermatologists, the brand provides clinically proven results for persistent skin issues such as dry skin, acne, and pigmentation. LUX launched a new bath and body collection, which is inspired by rich biodiversity of the Himalayas. Dove's Beautiful Curls range was launched in India, specially crafted to meet the unique needs of Indian curly and wavy hair. Lakmé introduced new face and lip mousse. Our digital-first brands, Love Beauty & Planet and Simple, further expanded their offerings with new on-trend innovations. TRESemmé expanded its portfolio with the new Moisture Boost of range of products. To beat the summer heat, Ice Cream launched exciting new flavors such as Cornetto Salted Caramel Brownie, Hazelnut Chocolate Ice Cream Tub, Boost Sandwich Ice Cream, and range of ice candies. Horlicks expanded its range with introduction of Milk Chocolate Horlicks, Millet Chocolate Horlicks, which is made from goodness of multi millets like ragi, jowar, and bajra, combined with the taste of chocolate. It is currently available across South markets. Talking about some of our activations in this quarter. Lakmé has always been synonymous with fashion and beauty in the country. The brand has stayed contemporary over years by constantly reinventing itself. At the recent Lakmé Fashion Week, the new look of Lakmé was unveiled. Boost has a rich legacy of inspiring kids to persevere, sweat it out, and overcome any sporting challenge with the grit and stamina. Recently, Boost partnered with rising cricket stars to celebrate their story of determination. Red Label launched a new heartwarming TV campaign about two strangers bonding over a cup of tea. This was another stellar quarter for home care with strong performance in both fabric wash and household care. Revenues grew 19% with mid-single-digit volume growth. Fabric Wash delivered solid double-digit growth led by premium portfolio. Household Care had double-digit value and volume growth led by outperformance in dishwash. Both categories continue to gain handsome value and volume market shares. Talking about Beauty & Personal Care, our business grew 10% with broad-based performance across categories. Skin cleansing delivered double-digit growth with all brands performing well. With softening in palm oil, further price reductions were taken in soaps portfolio. Hair Care strengthened its market leadership further and delivered mid-single digit value and volume growth. Skincare grew in double digits, led by strong performance in premium portfolio. We continue to make excellent progress in our portfolio transformation journey, especially in hair and beauty categories, with launch of several premium and on-trend innovation and entry into high growth demand spaces. Oral Care delivered high single-digit growth led by strong performance in Closeup. Let me now turn to Foods & Refreshment. F&R grew 3% led by foods, coffee, and HFD. Tea strengthened its market leadership and widened the gap versus nearest competition. The category witnessed consumer downgrading due to higher inflation in premium teas vis-a-vis loose tea. Combined with price reduction, the business declined marginally in the quarter in value, while tonnages grew 3%. Coffee sustained its strong growth momentum and grew in double digits. Health Food Drinks grew mid-single digit led by Boost. We continue to gain market share and penetration led by effective market development actions. HFD market remains subdued due to impact of inflation, especially in milk, which is carrier for HFD products. Foods delivered mid-single digit led by strong performance in ketchup and food solution. Hellmann's mayonnaise and Kissan peanut butter continue to gain consumer traction. Ice Cream grew in mid-single digit on a high base. Ice cream consumption was impacted due to unseasonal rains in the quarter. Summarizing our performance for this quarter, we had a strong top line and bottom line delivery. I have already covered most of the lines, but let me give you a quick highlight on few other items. Our employee cost was up year-on-year due to impact of true-up of IAS 19 employee benefits. On a full year basis, our employee cost is down by 20 basis points. Other expenses include the impact of higher royalty and central services from February 2023 onwards. Other income saw an increase due to higher treasury yields. As I mentioned earlier, our exceptional income increased year-on-year with gains from sale of property and disposal of Annapurna and Captain Cook brands. Our full year ETR, excluding trial period adjustments, was 26%. Including PPA, we had a reported ETR of 23.8%. Sanjiv has already spoken in detail about our full year delivery. Let me quickly recap the numbers. Our full year turnover was INR 58,154 crores, an increase of 16% year-on-year. We added about INR 8,000 crores to our top line. Underlying volume growth was 5%. Moving to bottom line performance. Despite unprecedented levels of inflation through the year, we have dynamically managed the business and delivered an healthy EBITDA of 23.4%. Net profit at INR 9,962 crores grew 13%. Let me cover this in a bit more detail in subsequent charts. It is important to put our gross margin performance in perspective. The net material inflation, or NMI, that our business experienced in last 2 years was clearly unprecedented. Put together, we had a cumulative NMI of about 30%, which is highest in the recent past. In such times of extraordinary inflation, we acted swiftly to drive our savings harder and take calibrated pricing actions with an intent to grow competitively whilst protecting our business model. Over last 2 years, our price growth is about 18% cumulative. Consequently, our gross margin declined over 600 basis points versus this pre-inflationary period. Despite the record levels of inflation, through dynamic financial management, we maintained our EBITDA margins in a healthy range. EBITDA in this fiscal was 23.4%, a decline of 140 basis points versus last year. Cost of goods sold was higher by 360 basis points, reflecting the impact of inflation. Our absolute A&P investments were INR 140 crores higher than last year as we continue to invest competitively behind our brands and maintain share of voice ahead of share of market. A&P as a percentage of turnover improved by 100 basis points due to growth leverage. Employee benefit and other expenses put together was lower by 120 basis points. In absolute terms, our EBITDA grew 9% year-on-year. Building on our EBITDA growth of 9%, we delivered EPS growth of 13% led by 1% benefit from depreciation and about 2% each from finance income and exceptional items. Through strong capital discipline and an asset-light model, we generated 1% incremental profits as leverage from depreciation. Higher treasury yields and prudent allocation led to higher finance income in this fiscal. Gains from prior period tax adjustment along with sale of non-core assets helped to generate 2% incremental EPS growth. Even if you were to exclude the benefit from exceptional items, we have delivered a double-digit EPS growth this year. Overall, this was an excellent performance of balancing strong top line growth and profitability leading to double-digit EPS growth. Sanjiv has already covered the highlights of each of the division. Let me quickly summarize the performance. Home Care delivered stellar results with 28% growth. BPC grew 12% and F&R delivered 5% growth. Margins remain healthy with Home Care at 18%, BPC at 26%, and F&R at 18%. Considering our strong performance, the Board of Directors have proposed a final dividend of INR 22 per share. Along with the interim dividend of INR 17 per share, the total dividend for this year is INR 39 per share, which is a 15% year-on-year increase. Before moving on to outlook, let me summarize what we have covered till now. It was a solid all-around performance in a challenging environment. We grew 16%, adding circa INR 8,000 crore to our turnover. Growth was significantly ahead of the market, with 75% of our business winning market shares. Our dynamic financial management helped us strike the right balance of competitive top-end growth and managing healthy margins in the face of unprecedented input cost inflation. EPS grew 13%. We were the best ESG-rated Indian FMCG company by leading agencies, making it a comprehensive 4G growth. As you heard from Sanjiv earlier, we also made excellent progress on our strategic priorities. Moving on to our outlook. Looking ahead, the near-term operating environment is likely to remain volatile, with global slowdown risk and weather-related uncertainty. With the financial sector stress, geopolitical crisis, and lingering effects of COVID, IMF has forecasted global growth to be below historical average. Consumer perception of inflation continues to remain high, which impacts their propensity and confidence to spend. Impact of weather phenomenon like El Niño and heatwaves remain uncertain at this point in time. We need to be watchful of how these variables play out, especially the onset and intensity of monsoon. We expect the price volume growth to rebalance further. Price growth will continue to tail off as we lap higher prices in the base and due to price reduction in categories where we are seeing commodity deflation. We expect volumes to recover gradually due to high levels of cumulative inflation and the fact that consumption habits typically recover with a lag. We need to be mindful that FMCG market volumes have been declining for almost a year and a half. Rural market volume is still declining. In these circumstances, we will continue to manage our business with agility to grow our consumer franchise whilst maintaining margins in a healthy range. Our focus is on ensuring right price value equation for competitive volume growth, building back gross margin, and stepping up A&P investments. From a mid to long-term perspective, Indian FMCG sector continues to be very attractive. Favorable macros coupled with low FMCG per capita consumption continue to provide huge runway for growth. Our focus remains on delivering 4G growth that is consistent, competitive, profitable and responsible. With this, we complete our prepared remarks. Over to you, Ravi, now to commence our Q&A session. Thank you, Sanjiv, Rohit, and Ritesh. We will now move to the Q&A session. We request you to kindly restrict the number of questions to a maximum of two at a time. In case you have any further questions, please feel free to join the queue again. In addition to the audio, our participants have an option to pose the questions through the web option on your screen. We will take these questions towards the end. With that, I would like to hand the call back to you, Tanvi, to manage the next session for us. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. The first question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. My first question is on the tea downgrading, which you have mentioned. I wanted to understand this because you and the other national player both have highlighted this. When I see your other categories in the home, personal care, et cetera, you have called out the premiumization quite strongly. Why there is a disconnect here? Is there a possibility that some of the other categories also could see downgrading if, say, El Niño happens, if the overall macro again further deteriorates? Yeah. Thanks, Abneesh. Let me start with tea. See, the development of tea commodity has been different from other categories. If I look at, for example, skin cleansing, if I look at home care impacted by crude, there a base commodity like crude oil or a soda ash or a vegetable oil impacted across the portfolio. It doesn't matter if it's a premium brand, low brand, et cetera. For tea, the way the commodity market played out last year, the commodity which we're selling as we speak today in our key products, the premium tea basically saw much higher inflation, and planters, which essentially go into making loose tea, did not see that amount of inflation. In fact, it saw price correction. Hence the gap between premium tea commodity price and loose tea price widened in the year. This is the reason why we saw in the year consumers downgrading, a feature that we did not witness as we spoke earlier in other parts of the portfolio when we saw high inflation coming, where people in fact moved to trusted brands. In this case for tea, since the gap for premium tea prices and loose tea prices widened to that extent, it led to downgradation. Of course, as we speak, we are at the tail end of the tea season, and new crop will get plucked later part of the year. We are hoping that, like every year, tea commodity moves in tandem, and this. Distortion does not repeat. With that, the market will rebalance the way the tea is done. Yeah. Just to add to what Ritesh has said, we must also, Abneesh, take cognizance of the fact that tea business has a large quantum of loose tea players. What our job has been to basically upgrade them and get them into packaged tea. When you have the differential that we are talking about, it is not surprising that many consumers gravitate towards the loose tea players. Yeah, that is the reason this has happened. In the long term, we believe the equilibrium in the price will also happen. Sure. Thanks, Sanjiv, sir. Just one follow-up I had on F&R was, your ice cream sales past few quarters has been fairly strong. This quarter, 5% growth seems lower than some of the other summer categories, for example, the beverages, et cetera. Is quick commerce slowdown because of the funding constraints impacting you? For ice creams, 10% of the sales pan-India was coming from quick commerce. Is that the reason, or is it only the unseasonal rains which you have pointed out? That would have impacted even the beverages for other companies. Yeah. You know, Abneesh, if you look at a full year figure, we are talking about ice cream, which has grown really handsomely. A 37% has been the ice cream growth. I wouldn't worry about a quarter here, a quarter there. Yeah. I believe that as we get into the peak season of ice cream, the growth will come back. Sure. Okay. My last question is essentially on HFD. Any impact of the current issue of high sugar content in one of your competition brands? I understand that for the competition, but does it impact you also in any way? 5% growth is a good number, given the current slowdown. Any number you have for the category growth? I'm sure you're gaining market share because of the initiatives. Is the category still declining? You know, we are still gaining market shares, and we are still increasing our penetration. The controversy which has happened has not impacted us really. One would also like to add that if we look at from a sugar perspective, there is a component of total sugar, there is a component of added sugar. In our Horlicks brand, the total added sugar per 27 g, which is one serving, is just about 3.6 g. When you look at the Diabetes Plus range or a Horlicks Lite malt, there is no added sugar at all. Yeah. Clearly these are brands which have been formulated to address the nutritional needs of India, where micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals, there is a very clear deficiency. Sure. Thanks a lot, Sanjiv, sir. That's very useful. Thank you. Thank you, Abneesh. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manoj Menon from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, team. You know, in the context of the, let's say, the changing input index scenario, some qualitative and possibly quantitative comments on the relative competitive intensity situation in home care, particularly in the mid and mass segments, please. Yeah. Thanks, Manoj. First is, I think, Home Care business is on a song. Yeah, we continue to gain market shares, handsomely, and we continue to gain, shares across the different price tiers. We have strengthened our business. The gains that we are seeing is not restricted to a pocket of the country, but it is very broad-based. When you look at the size of a business today at over INR 21,000 crores, delivering the kind of growth we have done in home care on a full year basis of 28% with near +9% volume growth under the circumstances is fabulous. When you look at our thrust on market development and premiumization, where we have created a business of liquids of INR 3,000 crores, is very clearly a testament to our ability to create the segments of the future. Yeah. We have been very pleased with the performance. While it would be wrong to expect that we can extrapolate the 28% growth on a year-on-year basis, but we are very clear that we will protect the market shares that we have gained and keep working on developing this category. As you know, Manoj, there is a huge market which exists basically at the bottom tier in powders. There is still a large segment of the category which is into bars, and our thrust of moving them up into higher order benefits will continue unabated. Thank you, Sanjiv. When you refer to market share, I'm assuming that you're also including volume market shares, right? Not just value. Absolutely. You know, we are growing our volume growth, Manoj, at over 9% annually. In a context where overall FMCG has decreased, you're talking about a scenario where we have gained both volume and value share very impressively. Perfect. See, the second and last question is, you know, which pertains both to, let's say, nutrition and BPC. Just again, quantitative and qualitative color on, let's say, if you could segregate some of the potentially, let's say, structural issues which you're facing versus cyclical. What I'm referring to is that let's say in a BPC, you know, the assumption is that, let's say, Glow & Lovely, you know, possibly is having consumption challenges because of higher consumer inflation and consumer have to make choices. Versus, let's say, nutrition, the milk inflation which you alluded to, is possibly a cyclical issue. Also particularly nutrition, there are at least some questions, you know, let's say, about category relevance, et cetera. Any comment with some quantitative backing would be super helpful to segregate us, you know, the narrative of the structural versus cyclical. Sure. Thanks. Certainly, Manoj. When we look at BPC, we have certain big categories, like skin cleansing, skincare, haircare, and then we have Lakmé and DMT and Oral. On a full year basis. Mm-hmm. Skin cleansing, which is toilet soaps, skincare, haircare, Lakmé, DMT, all have grown double-digit. It has been a very broad-based growth. We are very satisfied with which the BPC has performed during the year. Even when I look at the quarter that has ended, BPC has again delivered very broad-based growth, and it has delivered a double-digit growth. It has delivered a double-digit growth with a handsome, mid-single-digit volume growth. That really gives me very clearly a comfort that this business is on the right trajectory. The other more important bit is our premium portfolio is growing ahead of the market, and it is growing ahead of the rest of our portfolio. Our trust, again, Manoj, on market development and premiumizing our portfolio will continue, and that is how we will get growth. You know, a couple of years back, you would recall that, we had issues with our skin cleansing business. Now we are very pleased with the turnaround that has happened in skin cleansing, and you would have also seen how agile we have been with the pricing of skin cleansing, both up as well as down. Sure. Thank you. Just one follow-up thing, if I may. You know, there was the, you know, this comment, about, let's say, milk inflation impacting HFD consumption. The, you know, logical sort of thought which comes to mind is, let's say why that's not an impact, let's say, for a tea or a coffee consumption also where milk is an important, you know, ingredient. Is it essentially to do with the kind of, let's say, the discretionary element in HFD or is there some other angle there? No. If you look at tea, the component of milk is a small component of the total consumer price. Yeah. Whereas on HFD is, even what goes into HFD are the milk solids, and then you use HFD in milk. That's the general habit. The impact of high prices of milk certainly would be much more accentuated on HFD. The other bit also, we must understand that the tea prices has moved in a bit different direction compared to rest of the commodities. Tea prices went up in 2020 when rest of the commodity inflation wasn't there, the Ukraine-Russia war wasn't there. When the other commodities went up, the tea prices started deflating. If we look at it from that perspective, in tea category, we've had a negative price growth. It is a very different context when it comes to tea and when it comes to HFD. Fair enough. Thank you, Sanjiv, for this patient, response, wishing you great luck and all the best in your next innings. Rohit, looking forward to meeting you soon. Thank you. Thank you, Manoj. Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Vivek Maheshwari from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi. Good evening, Sanjiv and team. Hi, Vivek. Hi. Firstly, Sanjiv Mehta, thank you for all the perspectives and interactions over the past, 39 quarters. I definitely wish you all the very best. Rohit Jawa, good luck to you as well on your new role. Thank you. Two questions from me. First on, you know, if there is one thing which has been a constant, Sanjiv, in the last decade or probably even longer, has been this premiumization trend. I think Abneesh was trying to ask that question. You know, do you think with generally, like it or not, the stress has been more around rural, the stress has been more with urban poor. You know, whether it's your portfolio, generally speaking in the market, the premium part of, you know, portfolio has done well. With whatever news flows coming, sentiments, interest rates, you know, EMIs, everything put together, do you think that premiumization is, for the next few quarters can take a, you know, backseat? How concerned you would also be on overall, you know, urban demand, the premium side of things? Yeah. When you look at QSR companies, they are obviously struggling. The market leader is seeing, you know, SSS decline. Yeah. How worried you would be? Yeah. No, thank you for that question, Vivek. It is very difficult to give a very precise answer because there are many factors at play. Let me try to put things in perspective. Yeah. First is rural consumption of FMCG is one third of urban. You would recall, Vivek, that we always have been talking about. We in fact have been measuring the health of the market by looking at how rural growth has been ahead of the urban growth. You remember we used to talk about 1.3x, 1.5x urban growth. A medium to long term, that should continue for many years, if not for a couple of decades, because you come from a very low base. Today we are seeing a scenario where the rural growth is really muted. Even with the recovery that has happened, we are still talking about a rural volume growth at -3%. If I look at the wall value growth for the entire year, where urban has been about 11% for the market, rural has been just about 4%. That kind of differentiates. The other important bit we must always appreciate that whenever inflation happens, it bites the poor much more because the poor, the FMCG as a share of the wallet is much higher as compared to people with higher disposable income. Yeah? As far as FMCG is concerned, for middle class and above, FMCG is not recession-proof, but it is certainly recession-resistant because of the element of necessity and also because it is a small share of the total wallet spend. I don't think premiumization as a trend will stop, so long as the country keeps growing at 6%, 7% real GDP. Then when you take into account the inflation, you're talking about a nominal growth of 13%, 14%. Even when you look at a salaried class, all surveys are indicating that the salary increases this year is going to be anywhere in the vicinity of 8%-10%. Money definitely will come in if the economy keeps growing. When we talk about premiumization, we are not yet talking about masstige or prestige, which is in a different class of its own. We are talking about premiumization relative to average of the market and relative in the sense above 1.2x to the average of the market. Take a look at laundry. Yeah? With a tough scenario, commodity prices going up tremendously, growing volumes at 9%. We are growing the total value at the kind of value we have grown at, you know, high 20s, which again gives us comfort that premiumization as a secular trend will not stop. Our investment in upgrading the consumer to higher order benefits with consequential higher prices will continue. That trust will continue in the future. Got it. Just a quick follow-up, Sanjiv. You don't think in the interim, in the next few quarters, that pace of premiumization also slows down? You think it's a secular- Yeah. ... change and it keeps happening that way? You know, let me take this to talk about a bit of rebalancing that will happen. Yeah? If you look at the market, Vivek, the value grew at 8% for a full year. The volumes declined by -4%. The difference between the two was 12% price growth. Very similar to our full year results, where our top line grew at 16%, volumes grew at 5%. The difference of about 11% was the price growth. Right? Now what is happening is that period on period, commodity prices are not increasing at the same rate. At an aggregate level, we are seeing the price increase, which last year was 11%-12% in the last quarter, which we have just presented the results. The price growth has come to 7%. Many times people feel that price growth has come down, that means deflation has happened. There is a fine difference between deflation and further commodity increase moderating. At an aggregate level, we are not seeing a deflation yet because the prices of commodities on general are still much higher than the average or the median level for the last 10 years. Yeah? Once the commodity prices start deflating, then you will see the volume, the price value equation changing, and then you will see a volume kicker coming in. In the intervening period, there would be this period where the price tapers off, but the volume will not get a kicker, and this we have to be very cognizant of. Got it. Got it, Sanjiv. One question to Ritesh. You know, Ritesh, somewhere around your concluding slides, where you have mentioned about there's a chart on UPG. You mentioned that something like, you know, consumption habits will revert with a lag. Can you just elaborate, you know, what is your thought process? How much time will it probably take, et cetera? Because, you know, the price, you know, the UPG will certainly go down. Will the lag be too much, or how should we think about volume versus pricing equation as we go forward? That's what Vivek, hi. That's what in fact Sanjiv was alluding as he concluded his thought. Price growth to start with, you need that. On an average we had a 12% price growth, which then came down to 7% this quarter. To the point that we spoke earlier, with sequentially inflation moderating and us lapping price base and see sequentially some commodities also are coming down and hence we're also giving price offs. We will see this price growth of 7% further peeling off as we expected, number one. Number two, the volume as part of that then has to come up. There's always a big question as to how much lag it happens between price coming off and then volume taking over. There are two variables out here. Cumulatively, over 2 years, we still have 30% inflation. Cumulatively over 2 years, if I talk HUL numbers, we've taken 18% price increase. There's not overall deflation which has happened as consumers are concerned, the price that they're paying to buy commodities. That's number one fact. Number two, if you look at the RBI survey, the expectation that consumer has is still inflation being stubborn. Hence it then also impacts their confidence in spending money. Both elements are play out here. Which is why in our view, the coming off of volume will be gradual. Of course, different categories will have different amount of impact. Overall, as you know, skin cleansing as a market, for example, went through much higher amount of commodity inflation as a market, and it impacted at peak of that inflation as a market much heavily, overall volume growth of the market. We are seeing that coming off. It is still negative market growth, but it has come off significantly from the peak it was. In our view, it will take few months. It could be little more than few months. All depends upon as to how the income levels and how overall inflation basket stabilizes over next, I would say, quarter or two. Yeah, if I may, Vivek, I would just like to complete the other half of the conversation. You know, if we look at, you know, Ritesh rightly said that the cumulative NMI was 30% and we took a price increase of 18%. The price increase on the price point packs was much lower than what we took in the midsize or the large price packs. Consequently, we took a big hammering on the margins of the low price point packs. When the commodity starts softening, one of the things we would do is price point packs, we will start putting the grammage back. When we start putting the grammage back, you will also see the volume growth consequentially coming in. Here again, one wants to explain to you the principle that what is happening. This 30%, as all of you would recognize, has been an unprecedented inflation. That took a knocking on a variable margin of about 700 basis points from a pre-COVID level. The lowest point of a margin was the September quarter of 2022. Our variable margin has moved up by 290 basis points, and during this period, we have also put back 160 basis points of A&P. Also from the lowest EBITDA margin of June quarter of last year, we are now talking about even the EBITDA margin having gone up by 50 basis points. There are going to be various variables at play. Going forward, there would be just like we have always consistently talked about consumer franchise protection and the protecting the business model. Going forward, there would have to be a focus on the volume growth and the gross margin improvement. Perfect. Thank you very much, and wishing you all the very best. Thank you, Vivek. Thanks, Vivek. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Latika Chopra from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Sanjiv, congratulations on- Hi, Latika. Yeah. Congratulations on a successful long innings that you delivered. Good wishes to you in your new endeavors. Thank you so much. Rohit, wish you the best in the new role. Thanks so much. I just wanted to, you know, extend the, you know, discussion that we just had on the revenue growth. Seems probably we have to deal and sit with, you know, single-digit revenue growth in coming quarters as we wait for volumes to catch up. My question was on, you know, operating margin outlook. Clearly you want to step up A&P spend. Do you sense that, you know, competitive landscape is toughening relatively more as, you know, in this slow volume environment, everybody would try to, you know, grab whatever market share they could. Hence, you know, the EBITDA margins that we saw in maybe FY 2021 of 24.5%-25% could take longer time to come back. At the same time, if you see, you know, there is a lot more intent stated by some of the large leading retailers on their own label side. I understand, you know, you've always dealt with regional brands in the mass and space, but this time it seems, at least efforts, could be a lot more. Does that in any way kind of influence, you know, brand investments from the company? Yeah, that's a good question, Latika. Let me give you that. You know, when we took a knocking of 700 basis points of variable margin during this crazy commodity cycle, what also happened, not just with us, but with the competitors as well, that the spend on A&P went down. One thing we were highly focused on, that our share of spend has to be greater than the share of market, and that we ensured during this period. If you were to relook at our numbers, our A&P during this year was the lowest in several years at about 8.4%. When you compare with the pre-COVID level, it was at 12.2%. Yeah. What is going to happen as the gross margins, variable margins come back, one of the things would be the correction of the price value equation. The other would be the increase in the spend in A&P. When we look at A&P spends, we look at it from two lens. One is our own activities, our own innovation plans, our own getting into new brands, launching, et cetera, and the other is competitive spend. Yeah. We also are very focused on reach and frequency. Yeah. We would be very clear that the market shares that we have gained, we will not give up. Yeah. Protecting the consumer franchise, not only protecting, increasing the consumer franchise is going to be a key priority. Yeah. Just like we have improved the margins by nearly 50 basis points from June quarter 2022 to March quarter 2022, if scenario remains as it is without much deeper competitive heat, then the modest improvement in margin we would be looking at. We must also accept, Latika, that we have very healthy margins today. Yeah. At 23.5% kind of margins, it's very good. For us, growing our business, investing behind our business, protecting our market shares, that would be the key focus area. We will certainly, just like we have been, very efficient wherever we have found the opportunity of giving the value back to the consumer, we will be very adapted continuing to do so. Sure. Thank you. The second question was very specific to Hair Care category. You know, you mentioned a mid-single digit volume and value growth in the quarter. Just trying to understand, you know, was it because there were more price discounts or was any mix issue here? You know, if you look at Hair, you know, that's the reason sometimes just looking at the quarterly numbers never gives the full picture. Hair has been on a great trend. Even for the year, we have grown double-digit. Despite the price increase, we have had a good solid volume growth increase. I am not much worried about the hair category at all. Sometimes, you know, you have a base effect and you look at the numbers in a quarter. We should also look at it from a perspective that it was mid-single-digit price top line growth. Even within that, volume growths were still handsome. Sure. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Latika. The next question is from the line of Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Best wishes, Sanjiv, and congrats and best wishes to Rohit. Thank you, friend. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My first question is, according to slide 17, market growth both on value and volumes is on a recovery trajectory. While what you've seen is in your case, there is some moderation. Can you explain the disconnect since you are the largest player in the industry? Yeah. I'm glad you asked this question. Yeah. Remember I gave you the figure of 8% top line growth and -4% volume growth for the market for the full year, with the difference between the two being 12% of price growth. Yeah. You come to for the quarter. For the quarter, the value growth was 11% and the volume growth was flat. That means that the Nielsen numbers are still reflecting a price growth of 11%. Whereas in our case, the price growth has come down to 7.5%. What does that mean? When you take a price down, yeah, Our sales numbers are based on what we sell to our distributors. Whereas what the Nielsen captures are the store numbers. Between our numbers and the store numbers, there would always be a lag because there are inventories on the pipeline. It will be a time before Nielsen starts capturing the reduction in the price growth. That is the difference, is what you are looking at. Okay, that's very clear, Sanjiv. Thanks. I also wanted to get your sense on the industry revenue growth going forward. Before the inflation hit, industry was growing at single digits, same was the case with HUL. Now that the price hikes are fading, do you see this industry revenue growth again going back to single digits in FY 2024? Why is the industry, like, in last, like, 5 years, 10 years, grown below nominal GDP growth rate in your view? Okay. Now you are talking about serious macro issues. Okay? Now let me tell you, say, over the last 10 years, you know, we have grown at a CAGR of about 8%-9%, and with about 60%-70% of our growth coming from volume growth. During this 10 years, there have been 2 years of no growth. One was the period of demonetization, and the other was the period of COVID. If you were to remove this, then certainly our growth would have been in double digits. Yeah. With the volume growing at 6%-7%. Now, if you were to look at the GDP growth rate, yeah, while over the last 3 decades, the GDP growth rate at a CAGR has been about 6.5%. During the last 8, 9-year period, there have been periods when the growth has been 4%, 5%. When you look at the growth versus the GDP, you would be looking at a volume growth, yeah, and not the nominal growth. The GDP growth rate has been in the vicinity of the market growth rate in volume has been very close to the GDP growth rate. Not very different from that. Yeah. As the economy picks up, I would believe that the FMCG growth rate and the volume growth rate, if we have consecutive growth of 6%, 7% consistently. Remember something, 6%, 7% when we look at or the GDP growth rate, that's an average. Yeah. If Arnab Mitra's income goes up, that does not mean that the entire country there has been inclusive growth. Yeah. What we always need in our sector is more money in the hands of more people. Inclusive growth is what will drive the consumption in FMCG. Sure, Sanjiv. Just wanted to get some sense on FY 2024. I mean, like, pricing contribution will moderate. Volumes also, it doesn't look like there'll be a big recovery. Are we looking at a much lower growth rate compared to what we saw in FY 2023? See, the headline growth will be lower. There's certainly no question about that, if the commodity prices don't spike. Yeah. The volume growth, I would believe, should start picking up if there is no further increase in commodity price and the macroeconomic situation in the country remains good with 6%, 7% GDP growth rate. Sorry to, like, just, like, hype on this, but, like, even if I look at last decade, our volume growth has been 5%, 6%. Yeah. Right now also you are, like, in that range only. Is there a reason to believe that going forward the volume growth will be much higher than that? You know, again, you know, look at it from this lens. A very important picture is that when you have a small economy or people have small income, FMCG as a percentage of your wallet consumption is much higher. If the country becomes, say, $5, $6, $10 trillion economy, then your FMCG consumption as a percentage of your wallet becomes much smaller. The increase in consumption is at a much rapid rate. Today, people who want a higher order benefit brand, they may find it difficult to buy it. Tomorrow, if the incomes go up, they won't hesitate to buy it. That would be the macro picture. Sure. Sure. Thanks for patiently answering my questions. Best wishes, Sanjiv. Not at all. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arnab Mitra from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Sanjiv, and best wishes from my side also for all your future endeavors. Thank you so much. ...best of luck to Rohit for his tenure here. Thank you. We look forward to interacting soon. Sanjiv, my question was actually on the volume growth, which has come moderated a little bit from 5% to 4% this quarter. I think it's not a very large moderation, this is a quarter where almost all companies in your competitor set which have reported seem to have had a slight acceleration in their volume growth in the Q4 versus Q3. Also, as you rightly mentioned, as the price comes down, volume takes time to pick up. In this case, it's actually moderated a little bit as the price came off so sharply. Anything to read into this or was there something specific in one of your categories which led to this moderation, little bit of moderation from 5% to 4%? You know, 5% to 4%, I wouldn't make much about that. Yeah. I don't think it is something which would overtly concern at this stage. The good bit is that the competitiveness remains very strong. Yeah. We are gaining shares in much above 75% of our turnover. We are gaining corporate value share. That's a very good indicator that our competitiveness remains very strong. One must also remember that in a scenario where your market is still flat, us growing 400 basis points above the market growth is still a very handsome difference. Yeah. Hello, have I lost you, Arnab? Arnab, you are connected. Sorry, I got on mute. Sorry. I meant that, one is that you're saying it's not a big number. Secondly, there's not one category or segment which has dragged down the number from 5 to 4, which you need to kind of think we need to worry about. That's right. Got it. My second question was on gross margin. In your chart, as you show, you were at a 53% before COVID, which has obviously been down and now come back to 48%. Should we even think of going back to that 53% level, given that there was a very unique situation where commodities were low and we had the entire industry at high margin at that stage. Given that if commodities remain at the current levels, is there even a possibility in the near term to get anywhere close to that 53% level? Or should we settle somewhere in between where you are today and where you were before the COVID period? A combined question to that would be the A&P spends going back to that normal 12%. Is it contingent on the gross margin fully recovering? If it is contingent, does it mean that there could be some underinvestment which at maybe with a lag starts affecting the growth rate? My friend, you have several questions rolled into the couple of sentences that you've spoken, but let me try to answer you. First is when we look at the way we improve our margins, it is not all linked to commodities. The margins have also gone up because of a better mix. That's one very important bit. Remember our thrust on premiumization, and today we are much ahead of the market when it comes to premiumization. On an average over the last 10 years, we have increased our premiumization by 100 basis points every year. That's one very. The second implicit in your question is what will happen to the commodity prices. If commodity prices overnight were to go back to the pre-COVID level, then I will be much more confident in saying, yes, the margins will also go back to the pre-COVID level. Yeah. One doesn't know how much time it will take and what will be the stimulus for the commodities to commodity prices to go down to the pre-COVID level. Some may, some may not, it will depend on a lot of factors, and they are not just linked to commodities. There are a lot of geopolitics also involved in it, that's a bit unknown factor. From a strategic point of view, we will ensure that we protect our market shares. That's first the most important bit. If, for instance, it requires that we spend more, we will spend more for protecting our growth and market shares. We are very. We have got a huge focus on effectiveness of spend, efficiency of spends, and we're not going to waste money. Just because pre-COVID it was at 12%, that doesn't mean automatically we will spend that same money. It depends on activities. It depends on what the competitor spends, and that's what we are going to do. Protecting our market shares will be an overarching objective. That certainly not, we're not going to shy away from that. Remember also that we have been generating savings in the vicinity of 7%-8% of our turnover over several years, and that focus is bound to remain. When you get this kind of money, we will put behind investments, we will put behind correcting the price value equation, and we will also look at if there is a room, certainly a modest improvement in margin. Understood. Thanks, Sanjiv. That's very clear. Very helpful. Thanks. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my question. Since most of the key questions have been asked already, you know, I had a few near-term questions. Firstly, on the margins, you know, HUL has seen a smart recovery in gross margins, with no more pricing action, you know, and relatively less upgrading intensity in the markets. What could be the possible margin drivers except for a better mix? Can one expect a sequential margin improvement to continue, including the seasonality in the near term? Let me, let me pick it up. There are, you know, there are two, three different ways one can look at it. The point that Sanjiv mentioned that, you know, at the very peak of inflation, our commodity costs impacted overall material costs, in that period, we basically lost 600 basis points on an average of margin. If you look at last two quarters alone, because this price versus cost gap, which had gone as high as 1,000+ basis points plus, now has come down to 200 basis points from last few quarters. Out of the 600 basis points, we have already recovered 290 basis points. Half of that has already got recovered. Now, of course, the journey from that half, which has already got recovered to further, will all depend upon what happens in terms of price value equation and hence also more importantly, competitively price value equation going forward. The strongest muscle that we have of driving savings at any point in time, 7%, 8% on a, at a gross level, we do drive across all lines of P&L savings. That reflects muscle that we have as an organization will continue to come into play. Sanjiv talked about that overall premium products keep becoming larger parts of our portfolio, We keep driving that on an average ahead of the rest of the portfolio. That will continue to drive margins going forward. Number three, even items like HFD, the point that we've spoken last few quarters, that we have driven pretty good amount of savings as we have generated synergies from the acquisition. There's still some more job to be done in terms of realizing cost synergies from HFD portfolio. The levers of savings, levers of mix, levers of supply chain transformation. Yogesh spoke at length about our supply chain transformation that we're doing, where we're reducing the number of kilometers a product travels. Those elements items continue to give us cost synergies. Last but not least, we have articulated in the last couple of Capital Markets Day that over medium to long term, our double-digit EPS growth will be driven from top-line growth. That in turn will continue to give us leverage in our P&L because we do ensure that our fixed cost that we have in our base. We are very mindful of and very frugal in our mindset in terms of incurring the fixed cost. Turnover growth will keep giving us leverage on our fixed cost structure, be it supply chain fixed cost or be it non-supply chain fixed cost, that further will end up giving us margin. There are many levers that will end up having margin. The way we mentioned, there are three different ways we look at it. A, price value equation, keep it competitive to driving volume growth. B, drive gross margin. C, equally important, invested gross margin in driving competitive A&P spend, where share of voice is ahead of share of market. That's how we look at our margin model, and EBITDA in our mind is basically outcome of these three variables. Thank you, Ritesh. I perfectly understood. On price cuts, you know, if raw material prices remain steady at current levels, would there be a need to further take any price cuts to remain competitive or the current product prices are competitive enough to drive volume growth? Also any color if you can share on what would be the ratio of absolute price cuts taken in the portfolio, versus, you know, the grammage increase? Okay. Coming to overall price, I think firstly, the bottom line point that you mentioned earlier that from 12% to 11% price growth to 7% this quarter and this price growth element as we start lapping the price base increase and as we start seeing sequentially, taking price decreases in certain categories like skin cleansing and laundry, we will see this price growth tapering off. Of course, when you look at overall long-term, that doesn't change. Long-term 2/3 business or overall FMCG coming from volume, 1/3 from price, that's a long-term price value equation. In short-term, if everything else is equal to your point, if we don't see further coming in of commodity inflation, we will continue to see price growth tailing off. The balance between price point pack and non-price point pack. You know, remember the conversation that we had, that 30% of our portfolio is at price point. This is the part of the portfolio which had seen biggest amount of impact when commodity went up because our ability to take price increase was limited in this part of the portfolio compared to non-price locked portfolio. Now as prices come off, there I would like to just get into some amount of detailing. Laundry and skin cleansing has seen sequential price decreases. These are the places where also we've seen good amount of commodities coming off, be it vegetable oil or be it crude oil. Tea has already finished. I'm saying in terms of commodity inflation, tea is at baseline. We've seen very high amount of inflation. We don't expect any new need, new news on tea coming in before the next season kicks in in August, September. Until that there is no new conversation to be done on price value equation as far as tea is concerned. Laundry and skin cleansing we continue to watch and as required, as I mentioned earlier, the first port of call, keep competitive price value equation. We will do that if at all we do require to do. That's how I will probably take in all three commodity driven categories, different amount of nuances and conversations happening. Understood. If I can just squeeze in one small one on competitive intensity. With most companies, you know, witnessing this improvement in margins, are there any signs of competition from organized players heating up? If you can throw some light on the unorganized players as well. Have they started mushrooming back, as margins are getting better for them? Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Just again, probably the two extreme example if we could. One is skin cleansing and second is tea. What we saw the point I was telling earlier, tea has had a very different amount of development, where premium tea kept market commodity kept inflating and planters which is, which goes into making loose tea was deflating. Hence we saw that loose tea market, which essentially ends up using plainer teas at a low price point, we saw that element of the market growing ahead of the average of the category. Why that happened, as we explained earlier, as the price level gap between premium tea and loose tea increased, we saw consumers downgrading and the loose tea market, the group of players have had better outcome to their growth and their market share. If I take a corollary of skin cleansing. Now skin cleansing also has a portion of the market which sits at that price point of 60/70 price index. This price index market again, when we had very high amount of inflation and the point that we made consumers do turn to trusted brand during those periods where price value equation is much better protected. We saw that in this segment of 60/70 price index there was a stress building up where either players did not participate actively or they reduced their level of participation. We did see as commodity of skin cleansing has come down that this segment of the market has started to grow and players have started to come back. We have seen in tea and in skin cleansing that developing. A complete different example would be laundry, where our portfolio is very different compared to average portfolio of the market given the work that we've done over last several years of making our portfolio more premium with liquids, with premium offering of Surf Excel and stuff like that. Hence, our overall portion of the business which is in mass market is much lower compared to what we had a decade ago. Hence the amount of impact on mass market players again coming back and growing is a very different impact as far as laundry is concerned to us. Hence a different amount of, I would say, nuances to different categories. Understood. Thank you. The bottom line point is across inflationary situation, across moderating situation, our market share is ahead. We have grown market share last year and as we see now in some categories mass market players increasing their share, we continue to gain market share in all these categories, be it BPC, be it Home Care, both the places we have seen our market share continuously gain. Got it. Understood. Thank you, Ritesh, for this. Thank you, Mr. Mehta, for all your insights through the last decade. Wishing you all the very best for your next innings. Looking... Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Looking forward to our interactions with you, Mr. Jawa. All the very best to you. I look forward to that as well. Thank you. With that, we now have come to the end of the Q&A session. I do notice that we had more questions in the queue, but paucity of time, we will need to close the call. If there are any other questions which are unanswered, feel free to reach out to us at the IR team, and we'll be happy to clarify. I also noted some comments on poor quality of sound on the web link. Apologies for any technical difficulties. The playback of this call will be available on our website very shortly from now and hopefully that should answer any questions that you had. Thank you for your participation and have a great evening ahead. Thank you very much. On behalf of Hindustan Unilever Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.