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: Last fortnight, the Rs 9,000-crore Godrej Group did something it has never done before: changed its brand identity. Flanked by daughter and executive director and president, marketing, Tanya Dubash, chairman of the Godrej Group Adi B Godrej, unveiled the group’s colourful new logo before the media and said, “With our new initiatives, we are targeting a growth of 25-30% annually. The purpose of the whole exercise is to make the Godrej brand relevant and contemporary. Tanya is the chief architect of the project.”

Shedding its “frumpy old lady” image (chairman Adi Godrej admitted in a 2002 press meet that a Godrej as a brand has the image of “a frumpy old lady” and is looked upon as “an industrial brand”), the 111-year-old Godrej Group now sports a logo in bright colours—green, blue and ruby—a far cry from the staid look it has donned since the Group was founded at Lalbaug, central Mumbai, in 1897. In sync with its new logo, the group has also repositioned the master brand around the proposition of “Brighter Living”.

And that’s not all. The Group has drawn up a fresh marketing strategy to rejuvenate the Godrej brand both in the domestic and in the international markets. According to Godrej, “Since we are on a global growth path, we wish to have a new brand identity that has an international appeal. Currently, 20% of our total revenues come from the overseas market.”

It’s not difficult to see why the head of India’s foremost business group is keen to change popular perception of the group. His fast moving consumer goods enterprise, Godrej Consumer Products took its first tentative step in the global business arena in October 2005, when it snapped up the Middlesex-based Keyline Brands in a Rs 130 crore deal. Keyline Brands, which has a personal care range that complements that of Godrej (talcum powder, shaving cream, hair colour), was expected to give Godrej brands a no-fuss entry into mom-and-pop stores and supermarkets of countries like the UK. The aim, as stated by the Group then, was to earn at least 50% of its revenues from businesses outside India by 2010.