Dabur sees the largely untapped mosquito repellant market in rural India as a big opportunity for Odomos
Tropical diseases may have become a part of history in the West, but mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, chikungunya, malaria, filaria and encephalitis are still a fact of life in India. From early summer in April to the end of the rainy season in September, these diseases rage across the length and breadth of the country. For those who make mosquito repellants, it is of course an opportunity. Because diseases caused by mosquito bites have died down in the West, multinational corporations are unlikely to focus on it — they prefer to deal with products that can be sold across the world. So, Dabur India, India’s fourth-largest fast-moving consumer goods company, rolled out Odomos Oil, a mosquito repellent, in July this year.
Odomos, which fell into the Dabur portfolio in January 2005 when it acquired Balsara Hygiene Products and Balsara Hygiene Products for Rs143 crore (the two companies have since been merged into Dabur), was a cream to begin with, though the brand has been almost generic to the category. It has since been put out in the form of a gel, spray and now oil. Odomos Naturals, a variant with Citronella and Aloe Vera, has also been introduced by the company which counts herbal goodness at the core of its brand equity. The brand architecture is quite straightforward: Odomos Naturals at the top and Odomos Oil at the bottom with the cream, gel and spray in between.
The size of the household insecticide category is estimated at Rs1,600 crore per annum. This includes personal application creams, gels, mats, coils, vapourisers and aerosols. The smallest sub-category is personal applications creams — just Rs50 crore per annum. Dabur lords it over this category with Odomos; the only rival of any significance is Godrej Household Products’ Goodknight. (In addition, there is SC Johnson’s Off.) The responsibility to grow the category therefore lies with Dabur.
Dabur claims that personal application creams offer better protection than the other formats in the Indian environment. Diseases like dengue and chaikangunya are caused in the morning and evening by mosquitoes that breed in the open. While mats, coils, vapourisers and aerosols offer protection within the home, most of these diseases happen outside in schools, parks and fields. Mosquitoes identify humans by the distinctive odor they emit; Odomos, claims the company, masks this odor for up to 12 hours after application. It does not contain harmful chemicals and its efficacy is certified by the Indian Medical Association.
Rural opportunity
The problem is that mosquito repellants, with the probable exception of coils, have largely been sold in urban markets. Rural households still burn straw and cow dung to drive mosquitoes away. This is the opportunity that Dabur wants to tap with Odomos Oil. Industry experts say that the only alternative available to rural consumers is small local brands. Dabur could take them on with its strong brand recall and deep penetration of such markets. “With Odomos Oil, we are providing rural consumers better safety from mosquito-borne diseases at an affordable price of is Rs17 for 40 ml. It’s half the price of the Odomos cream (Rs33 for 50 gm),” says Dabur India Brand Head (Odomos) Rama Dhamija.
Local oils sell 40- to 60-ml packs in the price range of Rs8 to Rs20. “Oil spreads evenly on the skin. Our research team took a year to come out with a product that suits the rural customers. One bottle of Odomos Oil runs for three weeks,” Dhamija adds. These changes are interesting. Odomos, though it happens to well over 40 years old, never sold in the rural market. Dhamija admits that price was the main barrier. Rural consumers, recent experience tells us, look for cheaper alternatives in staple categories like soap and toothpaste so that they can spend more on lifestyle products like a mobile phone or motorcycle. Mosquito repellant clearly falls in the first category. So, price points are important.
While Dhamija can claim the first-mover advantage in the oil category, most of the others seem to have put their money on coils because it is the largest-selling mosquito-repellent format in the country with annual sales of Rs900 crore. Reckitt Benckiser Chairman & Managing Director Chander Mohan Sethi says: “In coils, our Mortein is the market leader. Other players are Goodknight and
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Allout. Mortein PowerGard is our recently-launched brand that has coils, liquid vapourisers and aerosols.” It also seems that Odomos Oil has not given sleepless nights to rivals. “Goodknight is very clear on the perspective of providing enhanced value and sensorials to the consumer. And while Goodknight does straddle multiple price points, it is never at the expense of superior product delivery and enhanced value to the consumer,” says Godrej Household Products Category Head (household insecticides) Kapil Dev Pillai.
Dabur decided to focus on the villages in Uttar Pradesh in the first round of promotion perhaps because of the widespread use of oil there. Rather than the mass media, it decided to go for ground-level activation — something the company has used to good advantage in the past. For instance, it had launched a contact programme with schools in nine states for Dabur Chyawanprash. The idea was to expose students in these schools to the health benefits of the product, keeping in mind the growing influence of children on household purchases and that these students will become buyers in due course of time. Similarly, for Dabur Glucose-D, the company the “Ace of Pace” talent hunt for fast bowlers.
Reaching out
It gave the Odomos Oil mandate to Jagran Solutions, a marketing agency that provides brand activation solutions via consumer-connect strategies and has worked with Dabur in the past for brands like Dabur Chyawanprash, Hajmola (candy), Dabur Red (toothpaste), Dabur Amla (hair oil) and Vatika (shampoo). The creative brief to the agency, according to Dhamija, was to educate the rural masses, giving them an opportunity to touch and feel the product while stressing upon the prevention measures.
To set the ball rolling, the agency used flip charts to highlight various facts such as death caused by mosquito-borne diseases, details and symptoms of these diseases, how to prevent these diseases and how Odomos Oil can help. The activity was spread over the primary health centres, Asha Didi (social workers) workshops, fairs, street plays and movie screens. “We contacted 13,095 retailers in districts like Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Aligarh, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi, Jaunpur, Itawa, Farukhabad and Saharanpur for two months. And now the second phase of the activity has started,” adds Dhamija.
What works in the rural areas most is the jugaad (quick fix) kind of marketing initiatives, says Jagran Solutions Chief Operating Officer Ambika Sharma. “The campaign, ‘Macchar Mukti Abhiyan’, created a direct touch point of 1.2 million people in 232 villages of Uttar Pradesh.”
Fifteen-minute skits, especially created for Odomos Oil, were a key part of the campaign. “A 35-member team organised these activities that concentrated on gaining mind share as well as market share. For instance, we ran the movie-screen exercise in 130 villages, and we showed two to three local films, which was mostly in the amphitheatre format. The whole exercise saw a crowd of 200 to 300 every evening. However, we stayed away from showing mainstream Bollywood movies, as they would have diverted the interest of the public,” says Shrama. “We showed clips of the product, Odomos Oil, during the interval. The crowd was given the product to apply while it gathered in the open ground to watch the movie. Thus, it was effective, yet it conveyed the message. A 130-foot replica of the product too garnered good response. We sampled the Odomos Oil to more than 80,000 villagers.”
Besides the on-ground activation, television commercials of Odomos Oil are active on state-owned Doordarshan, regional channels like Doordarshan Lucknow and Mahua. Dabur also did advertisements in cinemas that showed the Salman Khan-starrer Dabangg recently. Soon, the company will broaden its focus from Uttar Pradesh to the markets of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Dabur also it says it will also look to strengthen its foothold in the eastern markets. Maybe oil can do for Odomos what cream, gel and spray couldn’t.