Soaps fail to lather for Dabur

NEW DELHI: Dabur India’s entry into the highly competitive toilet soap market doesn’t seem to have had the desired results, with the category generating almost nil growth last fiscal. During the year, when segments such as toothpastes grew by a healthy 29% for the domestic FMCG major, soaps remained sluggish.

Chief executive officer Sunil Duggal admitted to as much during an analyst meet recently. He said the company would perhaps remain a “pretty peripheral player” in the Rs 5,000-crore soaps market for a long-time to come. He, however, asserted that Dabur was looking for “substantial” growth in the Vatika brand of soaps over the coming months.

The company has adopted a twin-brand strategy for soaps: Vatika for the health and beauty platform and Dabur, which leverages the company’s core ayurvedic heritage, positioned on the health platform.

Duggal said, “We are in the herbal beauty soap segment which is comparatively small and we don’t intend to go mainstream.”

He said the company plans to launch more variants under the Dabur brand and was hopeful that the segment would generate fairly substantial growth. Over the last two years, Dabur has managed to build up a soaps portfolio of only about Rs 20 crore.

Hindustan Lever Ltd controls about 60% of the soap market with brands like Lifebuoy, Lux, Rexona, Breeze and Hamam, according to industry estimates. After HLL come Nirma and Godrej. The medicated soap brands include Dettol and Margo.