Growth of ayurvedic products market not dependent on one player: Samir Singh, HUL

Samir Singh took over as the executive director for personal care at Hindustan Unilever in September 2014, when the Indian arm of the MNC decided to split the home and personal care portfolio. In 2015, he placed a large bet on HUL’s ayurvedic brand Ayush. He spoke to ET Magazine about his strategy. Edited excerpts:
Do you see the ayurvedic products market having expanded in the last few years after the entry of Patanjali?

I would say the growth in this market is a lot more secular and not related to the entry of one particular player. In fact, there is a global move towards herbal products and that market is growing fast. In India and China a large part of this is also related to traditional herbal medicine systems that exist in these two countries.

The Ayush brand was used by your network marketing arm, and was largely neglected over the last few years. What prompted you to bring it back?

Yes, our network marketing was not doing well. We have been debating on what to do with that business and now most of it is moving to ecommerce channels. When we decided to play in the natural and ayurvedic care market we considered if we should create a new brand, but then decided to stay on with Ayush. It will be our main brand and the product will be described under it.

You are basically repackaging eight products. How is your proposition unique?

We realised that people are looking for stories, heritage or credibility. So while you can just say you are adding ‘neem’ to a product, we are going beyond that, detailing our production process on the packaging. We are adhering to process as described in the ancient texts and providing information about it. Our positioning is premium, at around two times the average market price. The premium segment of the market is growing the fastest among all herbal product segments. The ecommerce boom is also aiding it, so we are presenting our products through ecommerce channels only.

Will it be ecommerce only?

That is currently the strategy. We are investing in online advertising, owning certain words and terms online. We are also actively studying the feedback that we are getting on various ecommerce portals. For the next few months we will actively study the feedback and then look at new products or new channels.