mumbai in a set of financials that reveal that the worst might be over hindustan unilever hul reported 19 growth in net profit to rs 1921 crore in the quarter ended december 2020 while turnover rose 20 to rs 11969 crore domestic consumer growth excluding the gsk consumer merger of 7 was driven by increased mobility since lifting of the lockdown and better economic activity the same was at 7 in the june quarter discretionary categories which suffered a setback due to the lockdown have shown significant improvement in growth in the december quarter however the volume growth of 4 is lower as compared to 5 in the yearago periodhul cmd sanjiv mehta said the rapid rollout of vaccines will give further impetus to economic growth as mobility improves demand would come back the nearterm demand outlook is improving and we expect to see revival in urban while rural markets should continue to do well said mehta in many ways fmcg reflects the sentiment of the country mehta said any stimulus on demand in the budget is bound to give dividends we look forward to this in the coming budget said mehtahul cfo srinivas phatak who is slated to take over as executive vp financial controller and risk management at parent unilever said huls fundamentals remain strong with 86 of the business gaining penetration health hygiene and nutrition which contribute almost 80 of the portfolio continue to grow in double digits and we have seen significant improvement in discretionary categories home care which contributes 29 of turnover continues to be in the negative territory 2 while beauty personal care and food refreshments grew at 9 and 19 respectively given the rise in commodity inflation price increases contributed 3 to domestic consumer growth although inflationary pressures are high srinivas said the company will accelerate investments in innovation and advertising promotion and maintain our competitiveness hul which had raised soap prices by 25 in the december quarter is taking yet another round of 25 hikes at the same time huls expenditure on advertising promotion rose 19 to rs 1392 crore during the quarter if one has to take the cost impact one will need a total price increase of 79 one needs to be judicious in price increases if these levels of inflation sustain we will have to look at price increases in select large categories said srinivas who will be succeeded by ritesh tiwari as the companys executive director finance cfo with effect from may 1overall the fmcg industry growth has revived from 17 in june quarter of 2020 to 5 in the december quarter from an ecommerce perspective we are happy with the kind of growth we are seeing the business which used to be 3 of our turnover is now 5 said mehta