It is a good time to be a brand manager: Sameer Satpathy, CEO, ITC Personal Care

In a special chat with Storyboard18, Satpathy says that brand managers today have the licence and the tools to really innovate and build their brand. We spoke to him about what shaped the company’s business, how they are incorporating D2C, their premiumisation strategy, and more.

In the past year, what has been your strategy with regard to premiumisation?

I think all our brands have a premium leg to it. So, when we are looking at price points, they are usually 2X, 3X, 4X the value we give to consumers. If you look at ‘Engage’, the brand is moving from deodorants to EDP (eau de perfume), which is a move to a Rs 500 price point from Rs 150. We are moving consumers up from soaps to shower gels. We are moving up from phenyl to natural floor cleaners, which is good for your kids.

What percentage of your portfolio today can you call premium?

Two years back, that number was 26. Today, it has moved up to 37 percent. Our brands are growing well.

We saw the Indian beauty and personal care market undergoing a rapid expansion this year, and it now includes a larger set of players, even start-ups — how do you view this?

It is a good time to be a brand manager. Today, you have the licence and the tools to really innovate and build your brand. And competition is always good. With competition, efficiency comes in. It makes us better and also forces us to move faster than what we would have done.

Do established FMCG players have an advantage over start-ups?

These companies cannot be called start-ups any more. They are more like insurgent brands which did things a little differently, built niches, and now are trying to scale up, so they have their own challenges.

Big companies already have established businesses, so they are trying to defend their core and still build new products. At ITC, what we have done is a little different. We have created products especially for the digital space. We have created three or four premium brands for D2C. And we have also invested in D2C companies. What that has done is created a great ecosystem for us.

At ITC, we believe that learning is a two-way process. So they (investee firms) lean on us for certain things, which we do better, and we lean on them for things they do better.

Are there any more acquisitions in the pipeline?

This is something we have done very systematically over the years. The last acquisition was Yoga Bar, which was four or five months back. At any point of time, we will always be talking to someone, or looking at something. But it's like a marriage. It has to work for both parties, right? We have to feel that in our hands the business will become more valuable than what we’ll pay for it. Even if it’s a good business, if we can’t add value to it, there's no point acquiring it.

Stepping into 2024, what are the things that excite you as the CEO of ITC Personal Care?

There are some interesting challenges. Media is a big aspect of our business today. But top-end consumers are slowly going away from mainstream media. They are consuming so much else. Even mass consumers are spending a lot of time watching (Instagram) Reels. As a marketer, the question is how do I engage my consumer? What is my creative idea? What do I tell my agency, and how do we reinforce our core and build new products? That's an interesting challenge to have.

The second one is channels. Today you have retail, you have modern trade, and e-comm. And in e-comm, there is quick commerce. The convenience is very easy to get hooked on to. So that channel piece is changing.

Third, I think, consumers today are exposed to so much that you really need to do stand-out work to be remembered.

And finally, the ‘product is back’, because in the absence of anything else, you need to have a fantastic product. It is stupid to not invest in your product.