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But may launch variants under Santoor brand

Mr Vineet Agrawal

K. Giriprakash Vinay Kamath

Bangalore, July 10 Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting will focus more on growing the business in the existing markets of Unza rather than bring some of its brands into India or launch them in other countries.

Wipro Consumer Care will, however, look at using the formulations of Unza products to launch variants under the Santoor brand, the company President, Mr Vineet Agrawal, told Business Line. “It is not a natural movement to take its (Unza’s) brands to other markets,” he said. Last week, Wipro Consumer Care bought the Singapore-headquartered Unza Holdings in an all-cash deal for about Rs 1,010 crore. Mr Agrawal said each market has its own local brands which are strong and well-entrenched. Imports do not necessarily perform well in such markets. “We must be cautious and do our market research well before we can think of launching them in other markets,” Mr Agrawal said. Hence, Wipro will try to use the formulations of some of the brands of Unza to make variants under the Santoor brand.

Mr Agrawal explained that one of the reasons for acquiring Unza was that launching domestic brands in foreign markets can take up valuable time and the formulations needed to be tweaked to suit the local conditions.

“Therefore it was the right strategy to buy the brand itself,” he said. However, Wipro will not depend solely on the inorganic route in its run-up to become the fastest growing FMCG products’ company in Asia. “If we take out the acquisitions’ share, we have been growing at 31 per cent which is pretty fast,” he said.

“Unless we grow organically, we will not be able to sustain ourselves,” he said. Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting has, however, grown largely because of the acquisitions it has made so far. Last May, Wipro bought the NorthWest Switches brand from North West Switchgear Ltd for about Rs 102 crore.

In Malaysia alone, Unza has a 50 per cent share of the market while in Vietnam and Indonesia it has a share of about 13 per cent-14 per cent. Mr Agrawal also ruled out plans to spin off Unza into a separate company and list it on the Singapore Stock Exchange even though the Singapore company had been planning to do so before its sale.

Mr Agrawal said the Santoor brand was considered the fastest growing in the market during the last three years. While it was strong in the Southern markets, and was the leader in Andhra Pradesh with a share of 26 per cent, it lagged in the North. Hence, Wipro had introduced a variant of Santoor, Santoor White, to drive the growth in the Northern markets.

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