'Acquisitions have helped us fill crucial product gaps'

Vijay Subramaniam says Marico will stick to male grooming, hair and skin care categories abroad

Vijay Subramaniam is the CEO, international business at consumer products company Marico, maker of brands such as Saffola and Parachute. He spoke to Viveat Susan Pinto on the way ahead for the company now that the international business brings home about 23-24% of Marico's revenues. Edited Excerpts:

For most consumer product companies venturing abroad, the challenge is to make the leap forward once they have achieved a certain level of growth. Your views on this?

Certainly. For most the biggest challenge remains that: How do you scale up from here. What do you do next? For us, that will mean two things: going deeper as well as wider. That is to expand our footprint to more markets abroad as well as penetrate existing markets even further. We propose to do this using a mix of organic and inorganic tools.

Will you go for large deals when looking at acquisitions?

That depends on what is on offer and what are our requirements. So far the acquisitions we made have helped us fill crucial gaps in our portfolio. In some cases, acquisitions gave us access to markets. So a combination of requirements will drive our inorganic strategy. 

Besides Middle East, Africa and Asia, are there any other regions you will look at as you expand your international business?

The potential for growth in these markets is huge. We will continue focusing our attention on these markets in our quest for growth abroad. The product categories will also be those that represent a global habit such as male grooming, hair care and skin care. This has been our strategy so far and we intend to continue with it.

Where do you want see your brands in your markets of operation? Are you already there or is there work to be done?

We would like to be amongst the top three in our markets of operation. In some markets, we are there such as in Bangladesh, where Parachute is the number one among 1,800 other brands according to a recent Nielsen study. We have leadership position in coconut oils and hair dyes in Bangladesh. Our subsidiary there is also listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. It's a business that is doing well. We have other strong brands too such as X-Men in Vietnam, which is the leader in the male grooming segment in that market. We also have Hair Code in Egypt, which is doing well. We would like to keep this momentum going in other markets too.

Will brands such as Saffola be taken abroad?

We have an unfinished agenda as far as our existing categories are concerned. So to answer your question, we propose to stick to our existing categories of male grooming, hair care and skin care as we seek growth abroad.