Food, home and personal care, potential SL growth areas for Unilever
There is still “huge potential” for Unilever’s future growth in Sri Lanka, especially in categories such as food, home care, with toilet cleaners, and personal care, encompassing skincare and deodorants, according to the company’s newly minted South Asia Executive Vice President Sanjiv Mehta. Just six months in the job, Mr. Mehta, who is also the Managing Director/Chief Executive of Hindustan Unilever, also revealed that hair conditioners and fabric conditioners were two products, with a small demand domestically, that Unilever intended to grow here.
Sanjiv Mehta
Elaborating, Mr. Mehta highlighted the fact that Sri Lanka’s market, while only 20 million in population, was three times the per capita, or consumer spending power, of India’s. This offered up significant opportunities because not only are all the product categories yet to mature, but they also had room for ‘premium-isation’, a concept wherein, when a category evolves, its related products develop in turn. An example put forward by Mr. Mehta was the area of laundry soaps. While most of Unilever’s sales in the laundry sub category were currently in soaps; as machine penetration grew, laundry soaps would take a back seat, in terms of demand, to detergent powders and other, more premium products in this area.At the same time, Mr. Mehta also noted that Unilever’s local business comprised leading market positions in most of the categories in which it competed domestically. Further, he also opined that when it came to growing business, it was often not solely about gaining market share, but also about creating categories. This is why his company invested a lot in this area. He also revealed that plans were in place for many of the company’s big brands to be reinvigorated or innovated upon, every two years.
He also signalled that, despite slowing economies, the South Asian cluster, which also encompassed Sri Lanka, has been experiencing double digit growth. As such, all South Asian markets were important to the company.