Urban consumption recovery still some time away: P&G Hygiene and Health Care CFO
Urban consumption
recovery is still some time away as the recent government interventions to ease the financial challenges of consumers in these markets will take time to bear results, said
Procter & Gamble
Hygiene and Health Care Ltd chief financial officer
Mrinalini Srinivasan
.
Talking to analysts in a call on Thursday, Srinivasan said the company will continue to hold a 'cautiously optimistic outlook' on demand. 'Rural demand recovery is healthy with a good monsoon. But urban demand is not following the same trend. It will take some time for the government interventions to show results on demand,' she said.
The government in the Budget for 2025-26 has reduced income tax rates to free up disposable cash for consumers in the middle income group and also taken other measures to control food inflation, including a recent reduction in import duty on edible oil.
The world's biggest consumer goods maker Procter & Gamble (P&G) operates in India through four companies—pharmaceutical firm P&G Health, shaving products maker
Gillette
, P&G Hygiene and Health Care, and P&G Home Products.
Srinivasan said the company is a market leader with over 50% market share in its core business areas of feminine hygiene sold through Whisper and cough and cold through Vicks.
'We still have significant opportunities for growth based on
consumption
, innovation and increasing household penetration. For instance, in feminine hygiene the category penetration is still less than 50% in India,' she said.
P&G is also witnessing small brands in direct-to-consumer and unorganized trade growing in feminine hygiene, but at a national level they still have less than 10% market share.
Gillette India chief financial officer Srividya Srinivasan also told analysts in a separate call on Thursday that the Gillette brand has further strengthened leadership in blades and razors this year. She said the company wants to cater to the grooming needs of male consumers which has become personalized.
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Coloured plastic bottles often end up as low-value grey plastic for pipes and not for new bottles, which leaves the demand for virgin plastic undiminished. The analysis of single-use sachets in markets like India is particularly eye-opening. These tiny packets, used for everything from shampoo to mouth fresheners, are nearly unrecyclable. But having unlocked billion-dollar markets by targeting the bottom of the pyramid consumers, these tiny plastic sachets are now ubiquitous. The book makes a persuasive case that recycling, far from being a solution, is often just savvy marketing dressed up as sustainability. Thus, products made from ocean plastic may be easy on the conscience but their price tags make them so prohibitive that they make no dent in the problem. Actor Rahul Khanna may cut a striking figure pulling waste from the ocean in an advertisement for 100 Pipers, but the only winner is Pernod Ricard India. Equally scathing is the author's critique of 'greenwashing", the sly manner in which companies deflect their environmental responsibility through lobbying and funding dubious science to confuse consumers. It is a tactic likened by author Michael Moss in his book Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions to the well-rehearsed corporate playbook of 'denial, delay, and pretense." Chaudhuri approaches her subject like an investigative journalist rather than an activist. That gives the book a balance often missing in discussions related to big MNCs like McDonalds, which, not surprisingly, features prominently. Rather than taking a flamethrower to plastic, it acknowledges the convenience and benefits of polymer, including savings on carbon emissions as compared to other materials like paper. In a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, Chaudhuri highlighted how consumer goods makers struggle to replace plastic with alternatives like paper, which often fall short in functionality. That doesn't deflect from the fact that single-use plastic is technologically difficult and often uneconomical to recycle. Which is why plastic products are often left untreated in dumps. Part indictment, part urgent manifesto, Consumed leaves readers not just disturbed by the scale of corporate complicity in the proliferation of plastic but also armed with the clarity to demand change. While charting how we got here, Chaudhuri also sketches what it will take to get out in a closing chapter on what we can all do to mitigate the disaster. Sundeep Khanna is a business columnist and author of business books.
