HUL versus Reliance: India’s FMCG universe promises to be full of action

A large part of the FMCG major’s market share growth has come on the back of premiumisation and that would continue to be its strategy going forward. “Our growth is driven by our strategy to move to faster growth spaces, new channels and new segments and also grow competitively. We have grown our market shares this quarter, which means a part of our growth has also come from competitive growth. However, our real focus now is to keep moving our portfolio to faster growth spaces. Therefore, when that segment of our business grows bigger, automatically our natural growth rate will go up. Over the next two years, we see our categories in core, future-core and market-makers,” Jawa explained.

While core consists of products such as Surf Excel detergent or Dove soap, future-core comprises new-age products such as liquid detergents and fabric softeners while market-makers would include products such as hair serums, protein bars and energy drinks as well as its portfolio of D2C brands such as Minimalist, Wellbeing Nutrition and OZiva.

“We have seen a 500 basis points shift to future-core in the last two years. The acquisition of Minimalist, OZiva and our market-makers portfolio of D2C are growing quite fast and that’s making a difference to our topline. So, that’s really a combination of portfolio actions, better growth in our core and macro conditions that is leading to the growth trend that you see at this moment,” Jawa said.