t's honey in soaps now. The Rs 4,700-crore soap market in India has no dearth of products for beauty or personal care. Companies such as HLL, Godrej, Procter & Gamble have been aggressive in ushering newer products into the cluttered, but frequently receptive market. Even IT giant Wipro maintains its presence in consumer care with Santoor and Chandrika. That hasn't stopped Dabur, India's fourth-largest FMCG company, from launching Vatika Honey and Saffron soap.

Soaps is a tempting category for a marketer such as Dabur because penetration is extremely high with 98 per cent of urban and 88 per cent of rural Indians using it. Amongst these, the beauty and skin care sub-category ranks the largest and comprises almost 50 per cent of the total soap market. Sharad Goel, head, corporate communications has this to say: "Test marketing began about six months ago in West Bengal followed by Andhra Pradesh. These two are strong beauty care soap markets and also have a high presence of regional media. Vatika enjoys a very strong equity in these markets, hence the choice. The response was positive enough to consider a national launch." ... more