Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has invested behind a clutch of businesses that are not typically FMCG by piloting the Bru World Cafes in Mumbai after entering the market of vending tea and coffee eight years ago.

The company decided to serve the consumer an entire cup of tea and introduced vending machines instead of Brooke Bond tea HUL's packaged brand, yielding the company about 50 paise per day per cup. This fetched the company Rs 3 per cup instead of 50 paise from selling packaged tea. The consumer goods behemoth was just beginning to tap the more profitable and contemporary consumption opportunities. The exploding network of urban cafes serving liquid coffee and tea at Rs 50 and above to mostly younger consumers made HUL research this segment as well.

Bru World Cafes plans to compete with Cafe Coffee Day, India's largest and pioneering cafe chain with nearly 1,200 outlets.  The on-premises vending opportunity for hot beverages is estimated at Rs 1,500 crore today. This brings HUL into a close contest with Nestle, the other major player in vending. But action in vending is revving up with Cafe Coffee Day and Fresh and Honest expanding presence and pitching for BPO-office contracts which are growing in number.