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Project Shakti is unleashing the potential of rural India and thus changing lives. It is ushering in prosperity and, more importantly, self-respect.

One in eight people on the planet lives in an Indian village. Hindustan Unilever’s Shakti Entrpreneurial Programme helps women in rural India set up small businesses as direct-to-consumer retailers. The scheme equips women with business skills and a way out of poverty as well as creating a crucial new distribution channel for Unilever products in the large and fast-growing global market of low-spending consumers. By 2010 the Shakti network aims to have reached 600 million consumers.