Consumer goods maker Unilever has opened a fragrance research and development centre at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, as part of a €100-million plan to use artificial intelligence to develop fragrances at its centres in India, the US and the UK.This is the company’s third global Unilever Fragrance House (UFH) and comes nearly three decades after it sold Quest International, its flavours and fragrances arm, in 1997.“We see three models. One wherein we create the entire fragrance in-house with our creative experts and consumer and brand knowledge. The second is where we collaborate with fragrance houses, which will continue. The difference there is that we will now bring our creative expertise. The third is a fully outsourced model,” Vivek Sirohi, head of UFH and R&D Partnerships, told ET.Unilever had formally announced the creation of the Unilever Fragrance House in November 2024. The company launched its first fragrance facility in May 2025 as part of this network at Port Sunlight, UK, entailing an investment of £80 million. Its US facility was announced in July 2025 in Connecticut.Sirohi said Unilever remains one of the largest scaled players in fragrance globally, making it important for the company to “start owning the whole design”.The maker of Dove soap, however, said it will not replace existing fragrance partners completely, but instead leverage them during product development and consumer insights as it adopts a hybrid model that combines internal capabilities with partnerships with global fragrance houses.Unlike the traditional model, where fragrance is developed separately from the product, the company is now looking to integrate both at the same time. “We want to co-innovate the product and fragrance at the same time, which means fragrance becomes an integral part of product innovation,” Sirohi said.The company said it is investing heavily in AI capabilities, predictive analytics and digital tools at the Fragrance House, accelerating product innovation and go-to-market timelines.According to Sirohi, the India facility will form part of a global fragrance network rather than operate solely for domestic brands.“Over the past few years, Unilever has invested substantially in India in terms of predictive capabilities, robotics and AI capabilities. This has helped us radically reduce the amount of time we take for innovations,” said Vibhav Sanzgiri, executive director, R&D, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL). “On average, about a 50% reduction in time,” he said, adding that the company views fragrance talent as global and expects India-developed fragrances to increasingly serve international markets.For the India hub, raw materials will be sourced from both domestic and global markets, depending on product and formulation requirements, according to the company.Its partnership with IIT Bombay is also aimed at strengthening research and talent pipelines in fragrance chemistry, AI and product development.According to Sanzgiri, the hub will collaborate with academia on research, internships, fellowships and technology development, while leveraging India's growing pool of scientific and engineering talent.The move comes as Unilever pivots to a home and personal care pure-play globally, with fragrance emerging as a key lever for consumer preference and premiumisation. In March 2025, global chief executive Fernando Fernandez had underscored the importance of the category, citing an annual investment of nearly €1.2 billion in fragrances.“If you compare that number with some of the key fragrance houses in the consumer division, it's not a small number. We continue working in partnership with all the fragrance houses, but we want to develop internal capabilities as well to ensure that the value in the value chain is better split,” Fernandez had said.