'We are re-staging our core to reach out to young India': Dabur Chairman Mohit Burman on the FMCG major's new growth trajectory

After a period of subdued growth, FMCG major Dabur India saw its top line growing after the pandemic. But as global economic uncertainties loom large on the horizon and competition intensifies in the domestic market, Mohit Burman, Chairman of Dabur India, is gearing up for the fight. In an interaction with Business Today, Burman, 55, shares his plans on how Dabur will scale its business over the next five years riding on its power brands. Edited excerpts:

How do you steer Dabur India towards a sustained growth path?

We have put together a strategy to drive business growth across all our verticals. The first pillar will be to focus on our power brands. Today, we have eight power brands in India and one in the international market. Our intent is to develop these power brands to power platforms by introducing a range of products and formats under each of these brands, thereby extending the portfolio and the total addressable market. In addition, we will also expand our list of power brands by including brands that have the potential to grow and become Rs 100-crore and Rs 1,000-crore brands.

How does Dabur compete in India’s ayurvedic/herbal-natural products market?

We are re-staging our core to reach out to young India. We are looking at [a few] key aspects. The first is to build stronger scientific claims for each of our products and back them up with scientific data and clinical trials. We will [also] increase the relevance of our time-tested and efficacious products by introducing new-age formats. To give you an example, rolling [out] Chyawanprash in a powder format or as tablets and capsules. And, we have started rolling out aspirational packaging for our products to make them more attractive on the product shelves.

Moreover, we are driving up the pace of innovation. New product development has increased to become 4 per cent of our portfolio as against 1.4 per cent in 2018-19. Digital will be the other key driver of growth. We have also soft-launched our own D2C channel.

A new go-to-market strategy has also been put in place, which focusses on expanding our rural footprint and driving relevance across channels and platforms. We remain committed to our strategy of superior go-to-market execution by enhancing our distribution footprint while focussing on driving growth for our power brands and building an agile organisation culture in our pursuit of sustainable, balanced growth and value creation.

What is the mid- to long-term target for Dabur India?

The plan is to aggressively grow our business across all three segments—healthcare, home & personal care and foods & beverages. This will ride on our entire strategy of focussing on our power brands, expanding the portfolio and enhancing our distribution footprint. Our intent is to grow the healthcare business to Rs 5,000 crore a year, home & personal care to Rs 7,000 crore, and double the yearly revenue of our foods & beverages business in the mid-term, of say, five years.

Why did Dabur acquire Badshah Masala? Are you planning more acquisitions?

We keep on looking for opportunities in our three segments. In India, there are no national brands in the masala category as tastes vary from state to state. As far as the acquisition of Badshah (Masala) goes, the idea is to use our distribution to take it pan-India. We will focus on making it a national brand over the next two years. We continue to scout for [M&A] opportunities in other areas. In the past we have had successful acquisitions like [household products company] Balsara and [skincare firm] Fem.

What is your plan for the international business?

Dabur’s international business reported a 20.6 per cent growth in constant currency terms in Q1 of this [financial] year. We remain confident of leveraging the growth opportunities to drive sustainable and profitable growth across our businesses. Our intent is to grow our core business in MENA (Middle-east & North

Africa) and SAARC regions. Even in the international markets, we intend to innovate, renovate and build brands while further strengthening our go-to-market, channels and category development.

If I were to get into the specifics, we are working towards becoming the No. 1 personal care company in Egypt. In Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa, our strategy is to expand our footprint. In the US, the UK and EU, we are moving from the current strong ethnic footprint to enter select mainstream categories, besides building new focus geographies in CIS, Ethiopia, Algeria and select South-East Asian markets. All these will help us grow in upwards of 20 per cent [per year] in overseas revenue.

@arndutt