Personal care will be a priority area for Colgate-Palmolive India, says company

Oral care major, Colgate-Palmolive (India) Limited is looking to shift gears. In an interaction with the media in Mumbai, the company’s MD & CEO, Prabha Narasimhan, said the desire was to build the personal care business, which is under the Palmolive franchise.

“There is underserved equity here and the potential exists for it grow twice as much as the company. The penetration of body wash, for instance, at an all-India level is only two per cent,” she explained.

The company will explore the option of bringing in brands from its global portfolio. Body wash is still viewed as a premium segment in India, with a large chunk of the population still using the traditional soap. Many companies with a presence in soaps have made a body wash portfolio but getting in the user base has been a challenge. The biggies like HUL, ITC and Wipro have a play here.

“With increasing levels of affluence, we believe there is an opportunity. Plus, we have a range of high-quality products under Palmolive that provide a good sensorial experience,” Narasimhan told BT.  For FY23, the company had revenues of Rs 5,279 crore.

Oral care is what drives the company’s revenues in India and it has a dominant market presence. Its Colgate brand and its variants face competition from the likes of HUL and Dabur among others.

 A report put out by KRChoksey Institutional Research after the company’s first quarter numbers for FY24, said the double-digit revenue growth beat estimates.

“The company had indicated in the previous quarter that it would see a jump in advertising expenses in Q1FY24 as it doubled down on the media investment to relaunch its flagship brand Colgate Strong Teeth with an improved formula and new communication. The brand relaunch included an aggressive sampling of 35 million and incremental spending to drive reach in rural India. In the quarter, CLGT also launched its first-ever Whitening pen which is a revolutionary new at-home whitening system,” it stated.

A company presentation showed that for the first quarter, gross margins stood at 68.2 per cent compared to 65.4 per cent for FY23, while EBITDA moved from 29.8 per cent to 31.8 per cent.