'Jyothy Labs will target personal care space in future'

Q&A: M P Ramachandran, CMD, Jyothy Laboratories

The Rs 364-crore Jyothy Laboratories Ltd is banking on the three areas of mosquito repellents, surface cleaners and fabricare to push growth in the coming quarters. The first two categories together account for 47 per cent of the turnover. Around 40 per cent comes from the flagship brand Ujala in the fabricare segment, which has been the company’s mainstay since its inception in 1983. However, in an interview with Viveat Susan Pinto, Chairman and Managing Director M P RAMACHANDRAN doesn’t deny the potential of newer categories to upstage its core fabricare business in the future. Edited excerpts:

When will you have a national rollout for the Ujala detergent?
In the south, we launched the Ujala detergent in 2005 and it has been doing well. We will be looking at a national rollout of the brand in the next financial year. In the current financial year, the Ujala franchise has grown 25 per cent. Hopefully, this portfolio should contribute more in the coming months. Plus, our effort is to get into the pre-wash space. We may launch a stain remover in the pre-wash category.

What are your plans for Maxo and Exo?
We are currently doing a national rollout of Exo, which should be complete by March 2010. We will continue to launch variants in the surface cleaning segment. We have a cake, liquid cleaner, gel and floor shine in the segment. But we won't stop here because the idea is to expand within the vertical. That is a strategy we have with all the three segments we are present in. With Maxo, for instance, we moved from coils to liquid vaporisers and aerosols respectively. We’ve purchased a technology developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation that will allow us to get into sprays, ointments etc in the mosquito repellent category.

In the fabricare segment, our idea is to make our presence felt in the pre-wash space with a stain remover even as we strengthen our foothold in the post-wash segment with a fabric whitener, stiffener and colour enhancer, and in the wash segment with a detergent. This year, we are looking to close with sales of Rs 600 crore — Maxo, Exo and Ujala will be the key drivers of this growth.

Given your emphasis on expansion, when are you likely to grow your personal care portfolio. You have only the Jeeva soap in this segment...
You are right. Jeeva is the only product in the personal care portfolio at the moment. But we are not likely to stop there. Following our expansion efforts in the three categories of mosquito repellents, surface cleaners and fabricare, we will be looking at the personal care category seriously. That is in 2011-12.

The next one year and three months will be devoted to Maxo, Exo and Ujala. Personal care is a space we are targeting for the future.

What allows you to undertake expansion of product lines so easily?
Our distribution network allows us to do that. We are able to feed our consumer base with newer products and variants on the back of a 4,000-strong distributor network, who in turn feed 2.1 million retail outlets. We ourselves reach about a million retail outlets directly. We also have a sales force of 2,000 people, which is constantly out in the field pushing our products. All of this helps in improving penetration and reach.

You forayed into the laundry services segment about a year ago with the subsidiary Jyothy Fabricare Services Ltd. What enticed you to this segment?
We found that the laundry services segment is actually quite an unorganised business in India. There are hardly any organised players there. You'd be surprised to know that there are people right here in this country who choose to send their garments, even under garments, abroad to be washed. There are specialised players abroad who do it. We saw potential both in the institutional and retail end of the business. In institutional, of course, we have clients such as hotels, airlines, service apartments, etc. On the retail side, the list is growing as we tap people who are willing to get their clothes washed at our outlets.

We just launched a premium spa service for the retail customer. That should help get people interested in what we have to offer. At the moment, our laundry services business is based out of Bangalore. We have a state-of-the-art facility that has a capacity to wash 40,000 garments per day. For now, we are washing 10,000 garments per day. But it will grow in time.