"Ghari did a Nirma on Nirma and will do

one on wheel too.

Hope all of us remember the advertisement that runs in our television

screens “Pehley Istamal Karo Phir Vishwas karo”

Am not talking about Hindustan Unilever , Reckitt Benckiser or Henkel am

talking about a brand from a very little known Rohit Surfactant Pvt Ltd the
makers of brand Ghari.which is the second largest brand in the HPC Market
in India which is estimated at around Rs 45,000Cr. The HPC market consists
of Detergents, soaps, oral care, skin care and hair care.
An aggressive pan India distribution coupled with an audacious pricing
game plan helped Ghari to cross the Rs 2000 Cr mark in sales in fiscal 2011.

The only brand ahead of them is “Wheel detergent” from Hindustan

Unilever with estimated sales of Rs 2500 Cr .As of December 2010 Ghari
almost doubled its market share taking it up to 13.5% in the 12000 Cr
detergent market. while Wheel still leads with a 17% but analyst says that
the gap is slowly narrowing.

To reinforce the strong position that Ghari has now let’s take look at other
brands that tail Ghari and Wheel are Lifebuoy Soap with estimated sales of
Rs 1400 Cr, Lux with estimated sales of Rs 1400 Cr and surf detergent with
estimated sales of Rs 1400 Cr all three belongs to Hindustan Unilever,
Colgate with estimated sales of Rs 1250 Cr. Reckitt Benckiser with 1800 Cr
(2009) RSPL which owns the Ghari brand ended the fiscal with net sales of
Rs 2200 Cr out of which Rs 2083 Cr was contributed by brand Ghari.

The Cofounder of Ghari Muralidhar Gyanchandani says they were inspired

by Karsanbhai Patel's famous low-cost model to take on HUL in the 1980’s
and with low cost manpower and low cost capital in 1990 that helped Nirma
took on Hindustan Unilever in detergents and emerged as market leaders.

Ironically Ghari has emerged as today’s Nirma and in the process took
away some market share from the price warriors of 90’s Nirma.
By the end of 2010 Nirma only had 8% market share in the detergent
segment compared to 35% it once had.

A lot of comparison can be drawn between Ghari and Nirma both had a
humble start with street smart marketing. But what helped Ghari is the size
of its home market Uttar Pradesh which contributes 17% to total FMCG
revenues
In the last three years Ghari added over 1000 dealers and now thy have a
total distribution network of 3500 distributors.
According to HUL the factors that are working in favor of Ghari is their small
manufacturing unit and having large depots every 200 Km in key market.

The only major difference between Ghari and Nirma is that Ghari didn’t fight
the battle on the price front and Ghari priced its product at a 10% premium
over HUL’s Wheel and Nirma. Ghari found a perfect gap to fit in priced
above value brands like Wheel and Nirma and priced much below the mass
premium brand like Tide and Surf.

Ghari is looking to foray in to the south Indian market to take on some

strong regional brand like Power and Ponvandu.

After being inspired by Karsanbhai Patel and replicating his success, the
Gyanchandanis will have to be careful that other brands do not do to Ghari
what the brand from Kanpur did to Nirma

Submitted by
Sharath.SR