Cinthol, Aer are among priority brands that we'll extend into adjacent categories: GCPL
Sunil Kataria, business head - India and Saarc Countries, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) in conversation with Ashish K Tiwari speaks about the company's brands and their plans to grow the categories by introducing new products.
Could you give us an overview of the various brands across product categories?
GCPL operates across multiple categories. We are in personal care with Godrej No 1 and Cinthol brands. In the hair care space, we have Godrej Expert, and B:Blunt at the premium end. Nupur Mehendi is another brand in the hair care segment. Then, we have two brands in the household insecticides business viz. Good Knight and HIT. Under air care, we have Godrej Aer, and Ezee is our brand for the fabric care business. These are broadly the nine brands or platforms that we have under the GCPL.
How are each of these brands performing for the company?
I think last year was very tough for the industry from an overall market point of view. However, from a company's perspective, we have actually delivered 11% volume growth last year, which a huge achievement for us especially keeping in mind the tough market conditions. A lot of our growth has been broad-based with most of our businesses doing well, particularly verticals like household insecticides, hair colours, Cinthol and Aer.
In value terms, how big are each of these brands?
Our biggest brand Good Knight is currently around Rs 1,900 crore, followed by Godrej No. 1 which is roughly around Rs 1,100 crore. Cinthol and HIT have also crossed the Rs 500 crore mark. Aer is a just about three years old and has done phenomenally well but I wouldn't want to share any numbers here.
Are there brands that are yet to reach the positioning desired by the company?
We are very well placed in terms of the brand platform and the target is how to get the core to grow. In fact, we have already identified some as priority brands for extending into adjacent categories. For example, Cinthol (from a soap brand) has the potential to become a complete personal grooming brand. And launching the Cinthol Deo Stick earlier in March is a step in that direction. Similarly, Aer is a brand that we actually see becoming a complete fragrance brand. While we initially had home sprays and car fragrances only, we recently did a huge disruption by introducing bathroom fragrances as well through Aer Pocket products. We are market leaders in the household insecticides segment, which contributes over 50% to company revenues, the objective is to expand and drive category growth. To this effect, we launched Good Knight Fast Card two years ago to drive rural penetration. We have now launched Good Knight Fabric Roll-on with the idea of expanding the out-of-the-home category within household insecticides.
But isn't the soaps category still facing challenges...
Soap is one of the few categories with 100% penetration; so the headroom to grow in penetration is very low. Accordingly, growth can only happen with market share gain and that's why the soaps as a category will never behave in the same trajectory as other categories mainly owing to its construct. Having said that, we are doing pretty well in many markets and I think Cinthol as a brand is a great example.