Bayer’s Consumer Health division is looking to ride on the fast-growing rural markets to expand its portfolio’s penetration in India. The company hopes to grow the share of rural markets to its consumer health business’ turnover to about 25 per cent from the current seven per cent in the next 4-5 years. Overall, the company is aiming to triple its household penetration to about 100 million households over the next five years in India.

Pharma major Bayer had set up its Consumer Health division in India in May with a portfolio that includes ten brands in key categories of analgesics, nutrition, dermatology and allergy, largely targeted at the over-the-counter (OTC) segment.

‘Huge potential’

Sandeep Verma, Country Head- India, Consumer Health, Bayer, said, “Currently India is the eight largest consumer health market in the world but has the lowest penetration rate. We believe there is a huge potential to not only grow the penetration of our OTC product portfolio but also to grow the overall consumer health category in India. Our plan is to increase the household penetration of our consumer health portfolio to about 100 million households in the next five years from the current 30 million households.”

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Consumers’ heightened focus on self-care in the post-pandemic world is also one of the key factors that is making the company so bullish on India. “Globally, we have called out India as one of the four markets that we want to focus on strategically, over the next ten years. All our products are currently being manufactured locally in India and our future products too will be made in India,” he added. The company has appointed Primal Consumer Health as its distribution partner.

Focus on rural market

Verma said that the company’s broad strategy will be to focus on contemporising or reformulating the core legacy brands such as Saridon and Supradyn to make them more relevant and also crafting new products targeted at specific consumer cohorts such as rural consumers. “One of the key focus will be on expanding our portfolio’s footprint in rural and semi-urban regions. We will focus on enhancing accessibility, crafting new products for rural consumers as well as raising awareness about self-care. For instance: In the nutrition space, we are looking at products that focus on tackling iron deficiency,” he added.

As part of its strategy to make its core brands more relevant, the company recently re-launched Saridon with a refreshed packaging and backed by a national campaign. “In the nutrition space, we are in the process of re-launching Supradyn which has been reformulated with more focus on zinc. So far it was positioned more as an energy supplement. But given the evolving consumer needs, we are now positioning it as an energy and immunity supplement. We believe nutrition will become our biggest category in the coming years,” Verma added.

The company is also focussing on research & development and will begin rolling out new products from next year.

“We are looking at India as a sum of many consumer cohorts and regions. So we may look at various strategies such as launching new products which are targeted at a particular consumer cohort or region or even channel. For instance, we are looking at leveraging on the e-commerce channel to launch online exclusive products to gauge consumer feedback,” he added.

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