Executive director of Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) Nisaba Godrej is fine-tuning the company?s organic and inorganic growth plans to sustain its growth momentum. GCPL?s consolidated business in the last fiscal was R7,583 crore, an 18% increase over the previous year. As the head of human capital and corporate strategy at the group, she is chalking out global growth plans targeting 26% annual growth. In an exclusive interview with Lalitha Srinivasan, she talks about the company?s strategies. Excerpts:
What will be your core focus as far as sustaining growth momentum in Indian FMCG is concerned?
I think our focus will continue to be on innovation. In fact, close to 40% of our incremental growth last year came from innovations. From an organic growth perspective, we will keep on innovating to sustain our growth momentum. We will also be building muscle to do it better. We are investing a lot in our R&D facilities. We have a new headquarters coming up shortly called Godrej One, which will have state-of-the-art R&D facilities.
We are also building people capabilities and increasing the size of teams working on innovations. I manage the product innovation portfolio at GCPL on an operational basis.
Tell us about your inorganic growth plans.
We will continue to explore acquisitions as part of our 3 by 3 strategy to build a presence in personal care, hair care and home care across the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, Latin America. We are very clear that any acquisition should have a strong strategic fit and be profitable. We plan to double down in Africa and Indonesia since these countries offer immense growth opportunities.
Where do you see your company in the next few years? Tell us about Vision 2020.
Vision 2020 was crafted in 2010 with the aim to be 10 times our size in 10 years. That translates into an estimated CAGR of 26%. To sustain this growth, we will need to develop leaders, and so we are strengthening our leadership pipeline.
Where will your primary focus be ? in the mass market or the premium sector?
As a company, we are definitely a mass market player. Our premiumisation approach is very calibrated. It is about offering superior quality products at affordable prices. For example, in hair colour, we had powder offerings at a price point of R15. We then launched the first hair colour in a sachet in India, Godrej Expert Rich Hair Cr?me, at a price point of R30. While this was premium compared to our other products, it was very affordable given other more expensive options in the market.
What are your rural initiatives to drive volumes this fiscal?
We are very strongly looking at rural expansion programmes this year. In fact, a lot of our growth has come from rural initiatives. Our rural sales are growing faster than urban. As part of our rural strategy, we are looking at new products like Good knight Fast Card, which is a paper-based mosquito repellent, priced at just r1. Only 28% of rural India uses household insecticides and we see a lot of growth opportunities there.
