CavinKare, the Chennai-based consumer goods major, plans to enter the instant hair colouring market this year.
It is test-marketing its products under the brand name ‘Indica 10minutes’ in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. CavinKare has a 5 per cent market share in the hair colouring segment in these regions.
The plan is for a pan-India roll out of Indica 10minutes in another six months. Television commercials are on in the states where it is test-marketing the products. The company has brought in Kannada filmstar Prakash Raj and television actor Ronit Roy as brand ambassadors. The advertising spends would be Rs 20 crore.
The Rs 1,200-crore hair colouring market, which includes powder-based, cream-based and henna-based colourants, is dominated by market leader Godrej Hair Colour (22 per cent market share), and international competitors such as L’Oreal and Garnier.
Indica 10minutes is to be priced at Rs 10. “We are planning to enter the instant colouring segment and also planning to increase the share of hair colour in our overall Rs 600-crore personal care portfolio,” said Vineeth Trakroo, vice-president, marketing, CavinKare.
CavinKare has been promoting its personal care segment in the past few years. Last year, the company acquired four-year-old Puducherry-based Padma Thermal Care, which produces 12,000 tonnes personal care products every year. The company’s Himachal Pradesh facility, currently running at a 42,000-tonne capacity, will soon touch the full capacity of 60,000 tonnes.
The company had said it was also interested in establishing its brands abroad. It is looking to double exports this year by reaching out to new overseas markets like the US, Europe and Australia. Last year, exports accounted for 5-7 per cent of the total turnover, which stood at around Rs 700 crore. For the current financial year, the company has a target of Rs 1,000 crore.
“CavinKare is a big enough name but with Godrej, there is certainly a lot of brand recall among urban and rural audience,” said a senior analyst. Industry experts said this could be likened to when CavinKare’s Fairever had to compete directly with Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL’s) Fair and Lovely in the fairness cream segment. The sequel has been that CavinKare is now relaunching Fairever, with new packaging and branding. It has said the initial response has been encouraging.