Wipro looks to expand personal care portfolio

Aiming to strengthen its presence in the personal-care segment, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting is expanding its skin-care range in the next six months, besides giving a facelift to its existing flagship soap brand Santoor.

“We will expand our personal care range within the next three to six months. It will be more of the skin-care products like lotions and creams. which we do not have at present,” Wipro Consumer Care Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing) Anil Chugh said.

At present, Santoor’s personal care range includes soap, face wash, talcum powder, handwash and body wash.

Besides, with an aim to gain a bigger market share and maintain its current growth rate of around 30 per cent, Chugh said the company is revamping its popular Santoor soap brand with a new package.

“We are repackaging Santoor and it will be available in a new shape while retaining its fragrance. This is part of our exercise which we do after every two-and-a-half years to keep in tune with the evolving customers,” he said.

While Santoor has a share of 8.1 per cent in the Rs 7,600-crore Indian toilet soap market, he said the company is growing faster than the overall industry level and hopes to achieve a bigger share in future with this initiative.

“The industry is growing at the rate of 16-17 per cent, while we are growing at almost 30 per cent. Our aim is to maintain this growth and gain a bigger share in future,” he said.

As it tries to push the refurbished Santoor soap, the company is also making it cheaper for consumers by increasing the size to 125 gm, while keeping the price at Rs 18 that was applicable to 100 gm soap.

“We have not increased the price. In fact we have increased the size without changing the price,” he said.

The company has also extended its contract with South Indian film actor R Madhavan to endorse Santoor brand of products.

“Madhavan has been endorsing Santoor for some time now. We have extended the contract. I hope he will help us give a boost to the brand,” he said.

Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting has achieved a turnover of Rs 527 crore in the quarter ending December 31, 2008, a growth of 21 per cent over the previous year.

The company had recently invested Rs 90 crore in capacity expansion of its facilities. At present, it has four manufacturing facilities in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra.