Sagar.Malviya@timesgroup.com

Mumbai: Unilever, the parentof India’s largest consumer go-ods firm Hindustan Unilever(HUL), has for the first time ack-nowledged competition in theherbal segment in the countryand said the company has beenlaunching products in the “na-tural” space to fight it.

There are “a couple of great ex-amples” in India in the herbalsegment: “Patanjali, which eve-rybody is looking forward towith lot of interest”, and Hima-laya, which is “sitting in the na-tural segment” in the personalcare space, Andrew Stephen, he-ad of investor relations at Unile-

ver, said in a conference call withinvestors last week.

This is the second instance of aglobal consumer giant publiclyacknowledging the growth of yo-ga guru Baba Ramdev’s PatanjaliAyurved. Colgate-Palmolive inMay said the so-called naturalsegment in India has been gro-wing rapidly and that the compa-ny needs to capitalise on it.

Increasing health conscious-ness and awareness among peo-ple about the benefits of using

nal care portfolio, a business thatcontributed about half the com-pany’s `̀32,000-crore revenue infiscal 2016 and about two-thirdsof its net profit. “What we are do-ing there incidentally is laun-ching several brands... we bo-ught Indulekha, which is a natu-ral positioning in hair oil. Ay-ush, which is a brand we’ve hadfor a long time but very strong innaturals … and Fair & Lovely hasgot Ayurvedic offerings in theportfolio now,” Stephen said.

HUL has been reporting slo-wing volume growth in India,largely due to a severe slowdownin rural demand. During its Sep-tember quarter performancecall with analysts, the maker ofDove, Lux and Rin also said mar-ket conditions have softened inIndia and volumes in skin clean-sing segment have suffered fromprice increases necessitated byrising commodity costs.

In April, Baba Ramdev claimedPatanjali Ayurved had the poten-tial to upstage consumer productmultinationals, including, Uni-lever, Colgate and Nestle.

Competition is ‘Natural’This is the

second instance of

a global consumer

giant taking note of the

aggressive

growth of

Patanjali

Ayurved

Earlier, Colgate-

Palmolive had said

the natural segment

in India has been

growing rapidly

and they need to

capitalise on it

HUL, Unilever’s

Indian arm, has

launched

several ‘natural’

products in the

personal care

segment

The segment contributed half

of the company’s total

revenues in FY16 and two-

thirds to its net profit

Other

MNCs,

too, have

shifted

focus to

Ayurveda

HUL’s parent says

products lined up to

fight a ‘great example’

in herbal space

Ayurveda have driven the de-mand for herbal products in themarket. With Patanjali’s rise tobecome a ̀̀ 5,000-crore companyin less than a decade, MNCs,too, have shifted focus to Ayur-veda — Colgate, for instance,launched Vedshakti toothpas-te, while L’Oreal introduced ahair care range under GarnierUltra Blends made with natu-ral ingredients.

For HUL, several of its newlaunches have been in the perso-

Unilever Admits to NewCompetition in Patanjali