Beco’s Aditya Ruia on Why It Took on HUL and What Comes Next

Beco’s decision to directly take on Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and its household names Surf Excel and Vim was nearly a year in the making, according to co-founder Aditya Ruia, who says the campaign was born out of a larger push to bring ingredient transparency to India’s home-care category.

In an exclusive conversation with OPEN Digital, Ruia said the thinking behind #WarOnWhatsHidden had been evolving for almost a year, rather than being a reaction to the current legal battle. The campaign was ultimately designed to make consumers question what goes into the products they use around the house.

“We saw that consumers and the general public needed the same kind of transparency in home care that they were beginning to demand in food,” Ruia said.

The campaign, launched on August 14, placed Beco’s home-cleaning products alongside HUL’s Surf Excel Matic Liquid and Vim Dishwash Gel, alleging that certain ingredients in the HUL products can be associated with skin irritation and allergic reactions. Beco highlighted Benzisothiazolinone (BIT) and Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate (LAS) in Surf Excel, and LAS in Vim. HUL subsequently moved the Delhi High Court against Beco’s parent company, Kwick Living, alleging commercial disparagement, trademark infringement and passing off.

The Delhi High Court has so far not imposed an interim restraint on the campaign. On August 19, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani sought Beco’s response before considering HUL’s request for an injunction.

From a category question to a direct attack

For Beco, Ruia insists the campaign is not simply about Surf Excel or Vim.

“This is a category-level problem. It is not just a problem with one or two brands,” he said.

That distinction is important because the strategy puts a relatively young home-care brand directly against one of India’s largest FMCG companies. Beco does not have HUL’s decades of distribution, advertising muscle or household familiarity.

Ruia acknowledges that imbalance.

“Any startup of our scale cannot compete with a large giant that has been around for decades,” he said.

Instead, Beco has leaned on digital-first channels, e-commerce and quick commerce to build consumer pull. Ruia argues that for a challenger, distribution eventually follows demand rather than necessarily preceding it.

“I don't think distribution necessarily comes first. People think distribution comes first, but I think success comes first and then distribution builds after that,” he said.

The HUL campaign fits neatly into that challenger-brand strategy: find a category giant, create a sharp point of difference and put the comparison directly in front of consumers.

But that is also where the risks begin.

The salience gamble

Brand strategist Harish Bijoor believes comparative advertising can be an effective shortcut to awareness for a smaller brand, but says there is a line brands should be careful not to cross.

“We live in very competitive times. There is the major brand, the minor brand, the brand distributed through traditional channels, and the brand trying to find its space. Despite this, I do not believe brands should indulge in commercial disparagement of another brand,” Bijoor said.

According to him, a smaller brand comparing itself with a market leader can secure rapid awareness, but some of that attention can end up benefiting the larger brand.

“When a brand compares itself with a biggie, it tends to secure very high awareness scores, but that awareness often accrues to the bigger brand,” he said. “It is a great way of getting quick salience, but brands need to be careful about commercial disparagement.”

The timing of legal action can also work in favour of the challenger, Bijoor argues.

“By the time court cases are filed, notices are issued and the ads are brought down, the salience for the new brand has already been attained,” he said.

That dynamic makes the Beco-HUL dispute more than a legal disagreement over advertising claims. For a challenger, the controversy itself can become part of the awareness engine.

HUL has been on the other side of this equation

The Beco campaign also comes less than 18 months after another high-profile comparative advertising battle involving HUL — but with the power dynamic reversed.

In April 2025, HUL’s Lakmé launched an advertising campaign questioning whether some “online bestseller” sunscreens claiming SPF 50 actually delivered that level of protection. The campaign did not name Honasa Consumer’s The Derma Co, but used packaging that Honasa argued clearly resembled its product. Honasa took HUL to the Delhi High Court, alleging that the campaign was disparaging and misleading. HUL filed a countersuit in Bombay High Court alleging disparagement by Honasa.

The Delhi High Court subsequently directed HUL to modify the Lakmé advertisement, including removing the phrase “online bestseller” and changing the product colour shown in the ad to avoid resemblance to The Derma Co’s packaging. HUL also agreed to take down the relevant online advertisements and hoardings, while Honasa agreed to remove its related social-media posts.

The parallel with Beco is not about the underlying scientific claims, which are entirely different. It is about the competitive playbook.

HUL used comparative advertising to challenge digital-first sunscreen brands. Now a digital-first home-care challenger is using comparative advertising to challenge HUL.

The difference is that in the Lakmé case, HUL had the scale advantage. In the Beco case, Beco is the smaller brand trying to turn a confrontation with an incumbent into attention.

But the science is now the battleground

The biggest unresolved question in the Beco-HUL dispute is not simply whether particular ingredients are present. It is what can legitimately be inferred from their presence.

Beco says its campaign is based on independent testing and scientific and regulatory literature. Ruia told OPEN Digital that Beco uses third-party accredited laboratories and conducts periodic testing, including on its own products.

HUL disputes the inference Beco has drawn from that evidence.

Senior advocate Amit Sibal, representing HUL, argued before the Delhi High Court that Beco had tested products for the presence and concentration of the ingredients but had not established that the finished products, when used normally, cause skin irritation or allergic reactions. Reportedly, HUL also argued that the effects of an ingredient in isolation cannot automatically be attributed to the finished formulation.

That distinction could prove central to the dispute: detecting an ingredient is one question; establishing what the finished product does under normal use is another.

As per several media reports, HUL has also argued that LAS is a commonly used surfactant with a functional role in cleaning products, rather than something that can simply be presented as evidence that a particular product is unsafe.

Asked about HUL’s argument that ingredients Beco has criticised are also present in Beco products, Ruia declined to comment, citing the ongoing proceedings.

“I can't comment because it's an ongoing matter,” he said, adding that Beco had already made its submissions before the court.

Instead, Ruia returned to the broader argument that consumers should have more information.

“More importantly, consumers should know what is going into their products,” he said.

The influencer amplification

The campaign has also travelled beyond Beco’s own advertising, with influencers and creators amplifying the ingredient conversation online.

Ruia says that not all of this was simply a paid influencer push. According to him, several creators approached Beco after seeing the reports and the brand’s messaging.

“A lot of the influencers also came to us,” he said, adding that Beco already works with creators and has built relationships with them over time.

Beco, however, has not disclosed how much it spent on the campaign or what proportion of its marketing budget went towards it. Asked about media and influencer spending, Ruia did not provide a figure and said the brand wanted to reach consumers across different media environments.

That distinction is significant in an age when a campaign can move from an outdoor hoarding to an influencer post, then to earned media and finally into a courtroom — with each stage creating another wave of visibility.

For Beco, the legal dispute may therefore have extended the campaign's life well beyond its original media plan.

Is this a new challenger playbook?

The broader question is whether ingredient and safety concerns are becoming a new weapon in brand competition.

The Lakmé-Honasa sunscreen fight showed how a product-performance claim could turn into a public brand battle and then a court dispute. Beco's campaign takes a different route, using ingredient transparency and potential safety concerns as its central proposition.

The commercial logic is similar: identify a consumer concern, contrast the challenger with an established player and make the comparison impossible to ignore.

The risk is that the campaign can become more memorable for the attack than for the product doing the attacking.

That is the line Beco now has to navigate.

Ruia says the company is comfortable challenging category norms and accepts that doing so can invite backlash from industry participants, vendors and other stakeholders.

“We are bound to make mistakes,” he said. “But the better we rectify them, I think authenticity matters a lot more.”

And Beco isn't closing the door on more

Ruia is careful not to promise another #WarOnWhatsHidden campaign. But he does not rule out further moves around the same theme.

“Our objective, in the simplest terms, is ingredient transparency,” he said. “Given those objectives, there are always multiple options.”

Those options could range from further consumer-awareness campaigns to other ways of pushing for greater disclosure. For Beco, he says, the question is ultimately which route best serves the objective.

That makes the current HUL dispute potentially bigger than one campaign.

If Beco succeeds, it could establish ingredient transparency as a meaningful differentiator in home care — and comparative advertising as a weapon for smaller brands trying to break into categories dominated by giants.

If it fails, the campaign could instead become a case study in how quickly attention can be won, and how difficult it can be to convert that attention into durable brand equity.

For now, the court will decide the immediate dispute. But the larger marketing battle is already underway: how far can a challenger go in naming, comparing and questioning an incumbent before the fight begins to define the challenger more than its own product does?