Godrej Consumer To Focus On Home Insecticides, Hygiene Products This Year

Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. plans to launch more hygiene products and household insecticides this year as customers become increasingly health conscious to avoid contagion amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Incense sticks (unorganised sector) are facing huge constraints and we are using this as very opportune time to really push them back,” Nisaba Godrej, chairperson and managing director at the maker of Good Knight and Hit insect repellants, told BloombergQuint in an interview. “The government has also helped by taking the duty on incense sticks from 10% to 25%. It's both demand and excellent execution which will help us,” she said without providing any details about the number of products in the pipeline.

While no vaccine is available yet for the deadly pathogen, the focus is more on prevention across the world. Ever since the novel coronavirus outbreak, that has infected more than 1.84 crore people worldwide and 19 lakh in India, sale of sanitisers to household disinfectants and insecticides has spiked. While many consumer goods makers have expanded their product offerings in the hygiene segment, some have forayed.

Godrej Consumer has recently launched a range of disinfectants and sanitisers under its brand ‘Protekt'. The company had launched a revamped Good Knight Gold Flash in February. The company's sales in the household insecticides category grew 27% year-on-year at Rs 540 crore in the quarter ended June. That compares with a 2% and 18% decline for soaps and hair colour, respectively.

Overall, Godrej Consumer's revenue was down 1% year-on-on at Rs 2,327.3 crore in the April-June period. Its net profit fell 3.1% to Rs 394.9 crore. The company's margins stood at 20.3% against 19.5% a year ago.

But as the nation eased the lockdown curbs, Godrej said the company in July saw an improvement in demand across segments in urban areas. Still, rural is growing at a faster pace than urban, aided by good monsoon, higher government spending and reverse migration of labour. Besides, the extent of lockdown in rural India remains limited as there are fewer cases, she said.

The company, Godrej said, is now focusing on tapping chemists as that channel remained unaffected even during the lockdown.