According to HLL chairman KB Dadiseth: ``We have made a significant headway with Project Bharat. We expect to accomplish reaching out to over 20 million rural households through this project by the end of the third quarter of the current year.''

Project Bharat was undertaken as a major rural home-to-home operationwith the focus of increasing penetration in the rural areas. The project entailed sampling personal products like Clinic shampoo, Pepsodent toothpaste and Pond's Dreamflower talc in low-unit price packs.

For instance, a pack containing these personal products priced at Rs 15 only, was introduced to the rural households. Repeat purchases of the products have been commendable, said company officials.

Officials said that the projectinvolved a significant investment and was an ``expensive'' project to undertake.

While the amount of investment was not revealed, officials did not rule out the possibility of repeating the exercise to sample other category products (besides personal products) like soaps and detergents to the rural households.

``Considering that the initiative will yield good results in the future due to greater penetration, there should be no hesitation in repeating the initiative,'' officials said.

HLL's aim has been to reach out to the Indian rural consumer to increase growth considering that the urban markets have been more or less saturated and heavily penetrated.

The success of low-unit price sachets have tremendously helped fast-moving consumer goods companies to drive volumes in premium products like shampoos and even detergents.

On the back of a fresh surge in rural demand, HLL's performance in the second quarter has bettered over the first quarter. Nearly 70 per cent of India's population exists in therural areas. Six years back, about 65 per cent of demand for HLL's products came from the urban areas. At present, over 50 per cent of the demand comes from the rural areas.

The company's distribution, as of now, goes down to villages with population of just over 2,000 consumers. With the new initiative, the company expects the distribution to be extended further with the help of rural stockists in smaller villages. The company thus plans to nearly double rural reach by the year 2,000.