Air care brands spread the aroma

Yesterday's compulsion has become today's necessity. What was used to neutralise bad odours is fast becoming a style statement.

The nascent air care market, pegged at Rs 200 crore, is buzzing with activity. Riding on innovations such as automatic sprays that unleash periodic bursts of fragrances, and electrical room fresheners, brands such as Odonil, Glade and Airwick are trying to make aircare a part of Indian consumers' daily routine.

As a result, the category – now being pitched as a mood elevator rather than an odour remover – has seen an over 30 per cent growth this year.

“Consumers are now looking at freshening solutions for every space in their homes. This has led to a surge in demand for fragrance products and formats,” says Mr Rohit Prakash Gupta, Dabur India's Marketing Head, Home Care, Odonil, which claims 85 per cent share of the air freshener blocks, typically used in bathrooms, has steadily been coming up with solutions to spread the fragrance into other spaces. It has launched sprays and an electric pluggy for the living space. This fiscal, it has also introduced Odonil Occasions, a special package of different formats of home fresheners, containing a reed diffuser, an oil burner, a potpourri, a pillar candle and aromatic floating candle.

“This marks the brand's entry into the largely unorganised and unbranded categories in the aroma products market,” says Mr Gupta, explaining how Odonil is attempting to convert agarbatti users who are aware of the benefits of fragrances to the brand.

Reckitt Benckiser's Air Wick, which is sized at about €700 million globally, has also launched a host of room freshening solutions including Air Wick Freshmatic which releases periodic bursts of fragrance, so that the consumer can manage the intensity of the aroma. “The formats that were a novelty two or three years ago are becoming generic; today consumers are expecting added functionality like desire to control the fragrance of the products,” says Mr Chander Mohan Sethi, Senior Vice-President, South East Asia, Reckitt Benckiser. He says Air Wick has big plans for the India market and is targeting being the category leaders.

American home care company S C Johnson too is homing in on the air care market here through its Glade Touch n Fresh range. “We are growing the market through shopper activation programmes, where we offer sensory experiences, and through digital marketing,” says Mr Shumone Chatterjee, the new managing director of S C Johnson India.

Procter&Gamble, which acquired the Ambipur air care brand from Godrej Sara Lee, has also been driving the category growth through aggressive campaigns focussed on the “on-the-go” male car driver.

The car market, in fact, says Mr Sethi of Reckitt, is matching up with the home market and growing equally fast. “The growth is actually two dimensional – both the automobile market and the home market are contributing significantly to the air care segment,” he says.

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