Consumer firms offer incentives to distributors

Consumer companies are giving incentives to the supply chain at a time when there is a push for growth in urban markets, which are affected, while rural sales have been up for the past few months.

- Sharleen D'Souza

Firms like Hindustan Unilever (HUL) are offering credit to the supply chain while Dabur India is giving higher target-based incentives.

According to distributors Business Standard spoke to, in the March quarter HUL offered seven days' credit to them to pay for the stocks they purchased. The company had started offering credit to supply chains a year ago, something it never did before.

It also offered a 0.1 per cent incentive on completing primary targets (which is buying stocks from the company) for March.

A distributor said: "We've never been offered an incentive before for meeting primary sales targets."