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With growth in rural markets beating slowdown trends, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) is engaging with a fresh set of wholesalers to enhance its indirect reach across villages. Giving a fresh impetus to its two-year-old rural initiative, Project Vistaar, it has now initiated the ‘Pragati’ wholesaler’s engagement programme to feed its products across villages.
“We want to strengthen our indirect reach in villages and through Pragati we will be feeding smaller villages with our products,” said Sunil Kataria, Chief Operating Officer, Sales & Marketing, GCPL. “A pilot has been started in villages with a population of around 3,000 through this feeder wholesaler’s programme. It will engage 15,000 wholesale sellers backed by technology to indirectly reach out to almost every nook and corner of the country.”
Today, GCPL directly covers 50,000 villages. With Pragati, it will indirectly reach out to an additional 50,000 villages. “While it’s difficult to assess the impact of indirect reach, we expect 50,000 additional villages to be get covered as part of Pragati,” added Kataria.
At present, household insecticides have a low penetration in rural India. GCPL will be pushing its brands like Good Knight and Hit in these markets. “We will also be launching specific products under the household insecticide category,” he said.
Godrej No.1 is at present the largest selling soap brand in rural markets.
Explaining the trends in rural sales, Kataria said: “Rural markets are not just about having smaller packs and 10-rupee sachets. Penetration of TV has led to consumers there demanding larger pack sizes and preferring premium products.”
During a recent analyst meet, Adi Godrej, the company’s Chairman, said: “This quarter rural growth has been at 28 per cent while urban markets are growing at 18 per cent. Our company is already focussing on the rural markets with ‘Operation Vistaar’, which is a rural sales promotion and channel development in states like Bihar.”
Information company Nielsen also endorses the fact that a slowdown is happening in urban India while rural sales are registering good growth. The urban slowdown is primarily due to sales declines in modern trade (8 per cent contribution to FMCG sales) as well as grocer/general stores (72 per cent contribution to FMCG sales).
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