"If prices keep increasing, rural consumers will move towards smaller pack sizes since there's a strain on wallets," said Alok Shah, a consumer analyst at India's Ambit Capital. Shah said poorer rural consumers could move to cheaper locally-made products instead of those produced by Unilever. HUL, the biggest consumer company in India by sales, said last January that demand in rural India - where average incomes are lower than urban areas - had begun to slow as prices rose. Unilever did not respond to questions on how much of its revenues come from rural consumers. HUL Chief Executive Sanjiv Mehta said, however, the company had begun seeing signs of a pick up in rural sales as inflation eases and farm incomes rise again.

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