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Marico is planning to segment its offerings in the skincare category and will introduce differentiated products.
“We will look at the mass and premium segments in skincare. Penetration is low in the segment but we will avoid fighting it out with products that are already present in the category through innovation,” said Anubhav Rastogi, Head, Investor Relations, Marico.
The Rs 650-crore skin care segment has been growing at around 25 per cent.
Marico has stayed away from saturated categories such as soaps after acquiring brands such as Mangal and Camelia. “We acquired brands such as Camelia in Bangladesh to get the much needed reach in this market. But now we are not focussing on soaps as a category. Today, our key focus areas are hair care, skin care, wellness and male grooming,” said Rastogi.
Even within these categories, theere will be focus on hair oil brands such as Nihar and Parachute while an acquired brand such as Oil of Malabar has been sidelined by the company.
Marico is also expected to raise prices of certain brands such as Saffola and Parachute in the next quarter. “So far, there have been no price hikes for Saffola oil and in the second half of the year there is likely to be some pricing action. There are regional preferences for the variants of Saffola,” said Saugata Gupta, CEO, Consumer Products Business, Marico, during an analyst call.
Marico is already spending heavily on promoting Saffola variants in categories such as oats and muesli. “We have spent Rs 50 crore this year on promoting the new categories of foods and expect this to add to the equity of the mother brand of Saffola,” added Gupta. Saffola edible oil franchise grew at 6 per cent during the second quarter.
There is a likelihood of copra prices increasing and this may lead to some pricing action for coconut oil brand Parachute.
As Gupta says, “For Parachute we cannot have margins which are not sustainable. Pricing is a strategic tool to derive volume growth. We are contemplating price calls for Parachute.” Purvita@thehindu.co.in
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