The Background

Naturals Market
Naturals is exploding in India. Products with natural ingredients are being adopted by consumers
across categories. Be it Foods, Personal Care or even House Hold care there is a wave of shifting
happening from Chemical/ Cosmetic to Natural.

Speaking of Personal Care (Personal Care = Soaps + Shampoo + Tooth Pastes + Skin & Body Care) alone,
Natural products already form 38% of the market*. Moreover, for the past 3 years, this segment of
the market has been growing at 2X the rest.

*Categories considered: Skin Creams, Cleansing, Hair Oils (minus Coconut), Hair Wash, TP, Lipsticks,
Deos & Organic Dyes

Experts estimate that similar growth trends will continue for the fore-seeable future. Approximately
6000Cr of Value will get added to Naturals as a segment over the next 4 years:
Market Players:
There are two kinds of players in the Naturals Personal Care market.

Naturals Masterbrands (MB) like Dabur, Himalaya, Patanjali etc. These are the ones where the
parent brand is itself seen as Natural/ Herbal Ayurvedic and hence is every product from their
stable
Natural variants of Cosmetic brands (MC) Examples of this are FAL Ayurveda, Clinic Plus
Ayurveda, Tresseme Biotique etc. Here, the parent brand is cosmetic but they have introduced
variants with natural ingredients

The MB players dominate the Naturals market. ~80% of Naturals Market share is owned by MB. And
while all of them play on Naturals, they have differentiating propositions within the Naturals platform.
Given below is a one line summary of the top players:

Dabur: Daburs success is driven by its credibility from legacy affiliation with Ayurveda and connection
with the market

Himalaya: Himalayas success in Personal Care is driven by face wash which forms 50% of its PC
revenues; Efficacy is the focus of all their communication.

Patanjali: has leveraged Baba Ramdevs image and Naturals proposition to grow rapidly to ~INR 5000
crore in FY16

Other MB players include Vicco, Biotique, Forest Essentials, Kama etc.

Consumer Context
For consumers, Naturals is one big green block of brands that have one or more natural ingredient
in them. For most consumers, Natural/ Herbal/ Ayurvedic are almost synonyms with slightly different
connotations attached with each. Hence, it is important for any brand in the Naturals segment to
clearly state why it is different from all the other players. Else it stands the risk of becoming a me-too
and getting lost in this crowded segment.

On probing consumers specifically about what is Naturals? the following responses are illicited:
 1. No side effects
2. No chemicals
3. Zero Ammonia
4. No preservatives
5. No Bleach

Hence, Naturals for many is defined by the absence of harmful chemicals.

HUL context:
HULs market share in the Personal Care is 37%. But HULs share in Non Naturals within this is ~50%
while within Naturals is ~10%. HULs entire share in Naturals comes from Naturals variants on Core
brands. HUL has no Naturals MB.

Hence, with Naturals pie growing, HUL stands to lose share in Personal Care.

The Plot
Lever Ayush
Lever Ayush is Brand that has been in the HUL stable for 16 years. Given below is a brief history of the
brand:

2001 2003 : Launched in 2001 as an Ayurvedic (Functional) Healthcare Brand

2003 2005 : Marketing Remained as a Ayush Brand Custodians, distribution moved to HUL
Network

2005 2007 : Brand deepened its Ayurvedic roots through Ayush Therapy Centre

2007 2014 :

Shut down of Ayush Therapy Centres

Health & Wellness Portfolio continued to be sold through HUL Network

2015 Ayush relaunched as an Ecommerce only brand. Exclusive launch with Amazon.

Lever Ayush Re-Launch

In 2016, given the Naturals market context and HULs share position in it, HUL re-launched Lever Ayush
as a Personal Care Naturals Masterbrand. Given below is a brief snapshot of how the new Lever Ayush
looks and what it stands for:
Salient Points:

The new Lever Ayush has products across 4 categories as indicated above.
The Brands Proposition is: 5000 years of Ayurvedic Wisdom to solve Modern Lifestyle
Problems
It's a mass-market brand with pricing in line with market leaders in each segment. You can
assume that Lever Ayush pricing is 10-20% premium to average market pricing.
Complete details on Lever Ayush, its products and advertising can be seen on the link below:
www.leverayush.com/

You may also visit the brands social media pages to experience the brand communication and
proposition.

Present Day
HUL launched Lever Ayush in South India in Jan 2017. The launch has seen early traction and buoyed
by this HUL has decided to take this brand National in August 2017.

The Brief
While Ayush is still in launch phase, two important questions need to be answered soon to ensure that
this brand keeps growing in the medium to long term:

1. Long Term Which other product categories should Lever Ayush aim to enter? Given that
naturals is penetrating across varied segments like foods and ingestible and home care
which are best next segments for the brand to enter?

2. Medium Term (2-4 years) How should Ayush continue to differentiate itself? In a cluttered
Naturals market, what should be ayushs take on the naturals play one that keeps it from
becoming a me-too brand.
Appendix New Lever Ayush Key Visuals