GCPL to sharpen focus on out-of-home category, rural areas

Home-grown FMCG firm Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) is focusing on rural areas and out-of-home category to drive growth of the home insecticides (HI) business in the domestic market.
GCPL's Good Knight brand is focusing on the rural market with innovation led products such as Fast Cards, while Hit brand is targeting the urban customers with its aerosol based products.
"Rural and 'out-of-home' would continue to be our focus areas. 'In house' is our main forte and we would continue to get share from it. But in all the area, rural would be our big focus," said GCPL Business Head-India and SAARC Sunil Kataria told PTI.

He further added: "The whole focus of Good Knight is in creating new products, new initiatives to help in penetration of the category".
GCPL is promoting the use of HI in the rural areas through product innovations and by participating in the programmes run by the state governments against fight against mosquito borne endemic diseases.
"Overall Good Knight continues to be a strong market leader in India and now being a market leader in the segment, we are looking for growth of the category. That's a big focus now," he added.

Presently, HI is estimated to be around Rs 3,800 crore market and GCPL is a leading player in that. Other players include RB India, Jyothy Laboratories and SC Johnson.

The company is also taking range of mosquito repellent products to the African markets through its brand Good Knight.
Over use of HI outside home, he said that the difference between India and rest of the world is that use of 'HI outside home' is very strong, and despite having high incidence of dengue and Malaria, people in the country are not taking prevention when they are outside home.
"We hope to build outside home category now," Kataria said, adding that GCPL is tapping the out of home category with its brand Good Knight.
The company has launched Good knight Fabric Roll-On Personal Mosquito Repellent six months before in the outside home category.

"Hit is for aerosol products and is largely an urban brand. It is a high range product but Good Knight has a large contribution coming from rural (area) as well," he said.
On World Malaria Day, GCPL today announced its commitment to create a malaria free India by 2030. Last year, GCPL had commissioned a project on the elimination of mosquito borne endemic diseases (EMBED) to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by vector borne diseases.
In its first phase, EMBED covered the Mandla and Dindori districts in Madhya Pradesh. Now, in its second phase the project has reached 3,000 villages and 35,00,000 people across 9 districts of the state.