Brains & Brawn

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: Drink Horlicks and be cool!” says Darsheel Safary in the latest campaign for Horlicks. The celebrated child artist of Taare Zameen Par could well be telling the story of the flagship brand of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH). Today the brand accounts for around 80% of the total sales of the Rs 1,542-crore GSKCH, a subsidiary of 24.4 billion pound GlaxoSmithKline plc of the UK.

Trace the half-century lifecycle of Horlicks in India (in the UK, it’s almost 150-years old) and it tells the story of a brand that’s changed with the changing demographics, segmenting itself into various new categories (Junior Horlicks, Mother’s Horlicks and Women’s Horlicks), each a separate niche in itself, while also managing to retain its foothold in the general HFD category, where its sway, especially over senior citizens, has remained unchallenged.

Take Horlicks’ sales record for the past five years—Rs 725 crore in 2004 to Rs 1,300 crore in 2008. A market leader in the Rs 2,200-crore health food drink (HFD) category with a 55% share (in the brown drink market; GSKCH’s Horlicks and Boost together command some 56% share in this segment) Horlicks like Safary in the campaign, has kept its pace of growth steady (23%) since January 2009—despite the overall market slowdown.

Clearly, the churn and burn strategy of the FMCG sector does not apply to the HFD category, where once you have established trust, you can have your customers for keeps, through generations.

In India, Horlicks was introduced in the late 19th century (before the radio was invented), gaining immense popularity with senior citizens, especially in the east and south regions, that continue to contribute 53% and 38% respectively to the brand’s national sales. In comparison, the north and west lag far behind, with just 6% and 3% share.

Gradually, as it strengthened its foothold, GSKCH began to expand its portfolio, introducing new variants—elaichi in the seventies, chocolate in 1991, vanilla (2003), honey (2003) and toffee (2005)—endorsed separately by a clutch of cine and sports stars, Moon Moon Sen and daughters, Vishwanathan Anand, Konkona Sen Sharma (for Women’s Horlicks) and Darsheel Safary (for Horlicks).