"Brands backed by science can command a premium": Jayant Singh, GSK

A week back, toothpaste brand Sensodyne was named India's No.1 'dentist recommended brand' for sensitive teeth, by TNS, an independent market research firm that surveyed over 500 dentists nationwide.

Sensodyne's market share, as of January 2014, is three per cent of the overall toothpaste market and 26 per cent of the sensitivity market within the oral care segment. Within three years of its launch in India, the brand has done business of over Rs.150 crore.

According to Jayant Singh, executive vice president, marketing, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, parent company of Sensodyne, offering specialist propositions is the way forward for oral care brands in India. We spoke to the ex-Henkel hand, who is currently on ASCI's board of governors, about Sensodyne and the space it operates in.

Edited excerpts.

Edited Excerpts

About three to four years back, the category was pretty much about overall oral care and basic benefits like strong/clean teeth, gum care and freshness. In the last two to three years, the category has matured; there's been a growth of premium, specialised oral care products. Sensitivity has been one of the big jumps and specialist products for whitening and gum care are coming into play.

In India, category penetration of oral care is high - the percentage is somewhere in the nineties. One way to drive growth given such high category penetration is to offer more specialist propositions and move up the segmentation and pricing ladder.

Previously, people would experience sensitivity but would avoid the foods/drinks that caused it or would just bear it. When products meant for sensitivity started advertising, suddenly, the understanding about the situation grew. Suddenly, the problem was given a name - sensitivity.

Very few Indians visit the dentist. If you went back three to five years, annually, only two to three per cent of Indians would ever visit their dentist. Consequently, understanding of sensitivity was rather limited. Of late, the figure has gone from around two per cent to four per cent, which though still low, is significant given India's population. That's why Sensodyne has been leveraging not just the advertising medium but also the country's dental practitioners; they have become big players in this journey of awareness creation.

In 2011, total awareness of sensitivity in India was about 17 per cent whereas global understanding of this condition is about 33 to 34 per cent. In a recently concluded survey, done with adults in Indian metros, we find that this number has jumped from 17 to 32 per cent. So we are now pretty close to the global average.

Sensitivity is a condition that can be caused by a variety of things. One of the things is the way we brush. If you went back a few years, most Indians have been used to using hard brushes - the harder the bristles the better it was believed to be. It was all about vigorous scrubbing over a short period of time. This can lead to sensitivity.

The recommendation is to change one's brush every two to three months, but frankly, in India, we use brushes like we do consumer durables; we don't change it for six months to a year, till it is completely worn off! Using hard, frayed brushes can also lead to sensitivity.

We target adults; so our TG is those in the 18+ age group.

Given the science behind the brand, we came in at a premium price and initially, it made sense to focus on the urban consumer from SEC A and A+. But increasingly, we find that we're able to penetrate deeper into small towns as well. Even though our bulls-eye focus from an advertising and communication point of view will continue to be SEC A, we are getting consumers lower down, too.

We are performing well in the chemist/pharmacy channel and in modern trade channels in key cities. Next, we will focus on how to start going to tier two and three towns through grocery channels.

Geographically, we're pretty evenly spread - 56 per cent of the total FMCG market is in the North and West. Sensodyne is in line with this FMCG skew.

As consumer awareness and incomes rise - which is the long term trend in India - they will increasingly look for specialist solutions to their issues and not go for generalist products. The sensitivity segment - comprising brands claiming they can offer relief from sensitivity - forms about nine to ten per cent of the oral care market.

Sensodyne is in a unique position because we are starting from a specialist proposition, and are building a specialist brand, versus some of the other players who have started from a generalist proposition and can, at best, offer a specialist variant. How best we can make use of this advantage is something we continually talk about.

One, in every three people, suffers from sensitivity, but the volume share of 'sensitive brands' is only four per cent of the toothpaste category. So, one in three suffers but only one in 25 uses it. When it gets to its fair share, it (sensitivity) should be 35 per cent of the total volume sales of the toothpaste category. So there's huge scope for growth.

And this growth cannot be just one brand's journey. So in that sense, we welcome competition; the more the noise around this segment, the better it is.

In the days ahead, the oral care market will become more segmented and brands that are able to offer not just basic but specialist benefits, backed by science, will be able to command a premium.