Hipolin unveils comeback plan

Hipolin Ltd, a Ahmedabad-based detergent company and once upon a household name is planning a comeback by revamping its production facility and increasing its market presence in areas where Hipolin used to be a household name.

Talking to Business Standard, Bhupendra Shah, managing director of Hipolin, said, "The company did not witness any growth for long but now we intend to achieve growth by increasing our production capacity, re-entering into the markets where we have brand recognition and undertaking aggressive marketing".

The company plans to target its customer base amongst the lower income group to gain through the economics of large scale production and sales.

Hipolin was started in the year 1970 with manufacturing of detergent powder on a small scale for the domestic market and by the year 1994, it turned into a public limited company.

Presently, the company has total production capacity of 14,000 tones per year for its three major products - detergent powder, detergent cake and dish wash bar.

For a long period the company was out of the lime light and did not advertise its products. But now the company had jumped on the bandwagon of advertisement starting with television advertisement on ETV Gujarati and in local dailies in Gujarat.

"We plan to further increase our visibility through advertisements", adds Shah. Along with the increases visibility of the brand "Hipolin", the company also plans to scale up its production capacity at its facility at Sanand in Gujarat by adding another 4000 tones per annum.

Thereby, the total production would scale up to 18,000 tons per annum for the mix of its three products in this financial year.

"We need to support the enhanced brand visibility with increased production capacity, so that the customers get the product in the market as and when they want", adds Shah.

It is also making its re-entry into the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. The company has a very strong brand name in UP, Bihar and West Bengal but due to the high transportation cost the company was not able to capatilise on this markets.

Supplying finished products from Gujarat to faraway markets like UP, Bihar and WB led to high transportation cost that added Rs 3 on per one kilogram of detergent or any other products thereby increasing its overall retail price of the products.

"We have sort out this issue by giving job work to one of the manufacturer in Kolkata who would be producing our product", adds Shah. With production done in Kolkata, the company can easily bring down its cost of production on per unit and would supply it products to UP, Bihar and West Bengal.

The manufacturer in Kolkata would be producing 4,000 tons per annum of mix of three products - detergent powder, cakes and washing bar for Hipolin.

"We have very strong brand recognition in these three geographical areas and with the re-entry we are confident to gain in terms increase in sales", adds Shah.

The company claims that it 80 percent sales generates from Gujarat and 20 percent from other states. It has its presence in Maharastra , Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Uptill now the company was managed by the Shah family which holds 70 percent stake in Hipolin, but with the increased competition, the company has planned to change its management system by bringing in professional management team.

"We will shortly recruit some senior level professionals so that the company can be managed more efficiently now", adds Shah.

Hipolin has appointed a management consultant firm to undertake a study for the company's present situation and suggest ways for improvements.