GSK, Colgate brace up for round two of niche oral care

Have lined up new products that target gum care space

Phase two of the battle for niche oral care has begun with British pharma and consumer goods major GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announcing the launch of a new toothpaste called Parodontax in India. This product targets those people suffering from gum bleeding. Anticipating GSK's launch, rival Colgate has already pushed a new variant in the marketplace called Colgate Total Pro Gum Health, which is competitively priced at Rs 93 for a 150-gram-pack. Parodontax, on the other hand, is available for Rs 100 for an 80-gram-pack.

While Colgate has got a leg-up with an early entry into the category (its gum health variant was launched last month), two years ago the situation was just the opposite with the Mumbai-based oral care major having to hastily launch an upgrade to its Colgate Sensitive toothpaste following the rollout of Sensodyne by GSK in India.

Sensodyne is the global leader in the sensitivity toothpaste market. Sensitivity is an oral health problem where sufferers are unable to have anything hot or cold thanks to a sharp shooting pain in their teeth.

In India, Sensodyne is marginally below Colgate's sensitivity toothpaste with a share of 24%. Colgate's share, according to industry sources, is almost 25% in the Rs 570-crore sensitivity market. The latter constitutes 9.5% of the Rs 6,000-crore overall toothpaste market in India.

Jayant Singh, marketing director, GSK Consumer Healthcare says he sees no problem with Colgate having timed its launch a little early to it. "The gum care market is still evolving and by bringing in a sharply focused product, we hope to change the landscape here," he says.    

GSK adopted a similar strategy in sensitivity as well, which prior to the launch of Sensodyne in January 2011 was just about Rs 150-crore in overall market size. With sustained brand-building by both GSK and Colgate the market has quadrupled in two years. Estimates are that sensitivity will grow to about Rs 1,000-crore in size in the next two years given its pace of growth, which is pegged at 45% per annum. The overall toothpaste market, on the other hand, is growing at 19% per annum.

Gum care too is expected to take off with big players getting into the space. One in three Indians suffer from gum-related problems, but products that specifically target the condition have been non-existent. That is a thing of the past now.

The emergence of niche categories is also partly linked to the effort by players to uptrade consumers especially those residing in urban areas. "The penetration of the basic white toothpaste in urban areas is fairly high. Where do you go from here?," asks Anand Shah, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) analyst at Mumbai-based Elara Capital. "By building awareness of specific oral health problems, the effort is to migrate some of them especially those suffering from those conditions onto the new products," he says.

These products are also priced higher to regular oral health products. A 40-gram-pack of Sensodyne, for instance, is available for Rs 45, while an 80-gram-pack comes for Rs 90. Colgate's sensitivity toothpaste too is priced in this range. On the other hand, a regular Colgate toothpaste would cost a consumer Rs 40-45 for a 100-gram-pack.