In India’s rapidly transforming FMCG industry, Hindustan Unilever Limited (Unilever) has pioneered AUTOMATION to manage its demand-supply chains effectively, and revolutionizing B2B sales models with partners (Pharmacists – The HEALTHCARE PROFFESIONALS).

Unilever launched SHIKHAR – an app that transforms traditional sales models to empower pharmacists to buy smarter,increases efficiency in daily operations, and positively impacts profitability of their businesses.

With 100k+ registered pharmaceutical stores on SHIKHAR, Unilever created a perceivable win-win situation, for distribution of their range of nutrition products.

BUSINESS PROBLEM: While number of app installs signalled initial popularity, it wasn’t the whole story. A real challenge was rising - reflecting in HIGH DORMANCY RATES OF SHIKHAR.

Consequences were severe:

- Lack of knowhow on new variants/wide assortments of nutrition products resulted in these products going unnoticed and remaining unsold.

- Moreover, Pharmacists were unaware of in-app daily offers and reward programs, and spent negligible amount of time in-app.

Consumer Insight: When salesmen visit pharmacists 2-3 times/week, they become their go-to point of contact for product queries, market updates, business advice and stock management. This helps Unilever build long-lasting loyalty, and helps pharmacists increase their nutrition and business acumen. Our pharmacists increasingly crave for this HI (Human interactions), as AI-led automation reforms the B2B world.

Creative Idea: We wanted to add the dimension of a human sales rep on the app that could give pharmacists the personal connection they yearned for.

Introducing – the SHIKHAR SUPER CHAT. A one-of-a-kind live commerce innovation designed for pharmacists to

- develop their knowhow of Unilever’s nutrition portfolio

- engage them via real-time interactions

- persuade them with personalised offers/rewards

- And create sustainable demand for wide assortments of products

Launching SHIKHAR made Unilever’s nutrition assortments accessible to all Pharmacists. But how could Unilever spark tangible engagement with this pharmacist network on SHIKHAR?

We asked ourselves – Why does a B2B app have to be only about ordering products? Infotainment supplemented with ease of ordering could be a game changer in nutrition business.

“World Pharmacists Day” is a global event that is celebrated on 25th September. In 2022, Unilever took this opportunity to celebrate their healthcare professionals via SHIKHAR SUPER CHAT.

While it was already a robust commerce platform for pharmacists, they still couldn’t transition their ordering processes entirely to SHIKHAR because of established ease with sales reps. That’s where Unilever saw opportunity to activate content-to-commerce with SHIKHAR SUPER CHAT!

A live commerce session where Mandira Bedi [well-known fitness enthusiast, actor, and celebrity] was roped in as the apt ‘Sales Representative’ to educate, entertain, and increase sale volumes to pharmacists.

SHIKHAR SUPER CHAT it was meticulously crafted to humanise in-app experiences of pharmacists.

MOULDED SHIKHAR’S SALES REP IDENTITY, by onboarding a personality pharmacists associated with, and who’s a bigger face than our salespeople. Enter Mandira Bedi –celebrated actor, mother, and fitness influencer who firmly advocates healthy living.

REVIVED TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION via a multi-functional live chat feature. Pharmacists could ask Mandira all product-related questions, and she answered them individually, making users feel listened to. Pharmacists also participated in polls and quizzes on live chat-aimed at extending their knowhow of product assortments.

PERSONALISED PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS, by collecting retargetable data of pharmacists, wherein the more pharmacists engaged with product polls, quizzes and queries, the better Shikhar understood their buying behaviour.

SEAMLESSLY TRANSITIONED USERS FROM ENGAGEMENT TO COMMERCE: by integrating product assortments and ordering options in chat interface itself, coupled with multiple discounts & offers. They could enjoy the event & place orders parallelly.

With SHIKHAR SUPER CHAT, the app overnight became Unilever’s best Salesman of the year. The proof is in the numbers.

In-App Results:

- Dormancy reduced from 30% to 24% post-event in the following months.

- 2.8x higher app visits as compared to any other day*.

- $1Mn worth orders were placed -15x higher than Avg. Daily sales*.

- 5000 unique pharmacists ordered 35000 new product assortments*.

- 1500+ new pharmacists were onboarded as a post-result of the live commerce event.

Session Engagement Results:

- 13000+ Unique Event Visitors within 30 minutes.

- 8.5+ mins Average Watch Time (live event) –2x of the industry benchmark*.

- 45.6 % Live Stream Engagement Rate-1.9x of the industry benchmark*.

- 13,400 Total Viewer Reactions–1.4x of industry standards*.

- 60K+ mins Watch time of Live stream including replays-2.6x of industry standards*.

*App Benchmarks provided by Unilever India.

*Live Commerce benchmarks provided by Firework (Technology partner).