``We expect half of our personal care product sales to come from the rural market five years hence. The personal products industry currently is of the order of Rs 6,500 crore. This will double in the next three years, partly due to the normal growth of the industry and partly because of the induced penetration exercise kicked off by HLL,'' said HLL marketing controller (personal products division) Dalip Sehgal. Sales of HLL's personal products stood at Rs 1,526 crore in 1998. The rural contribution is roughly Rs 458 crore during the year. Analysts estimate Lever's rural sales to catapult to over Rs 1,500 crore by 2004.

While HLL is attempting toincrease penetration of its personal products like Pepsodent toothpaste, Fair & Lovely fairness cream, Pond's talc and Clinic shampoo, the only major competitor brand which is well penetrated and high in terms of visibility and awareness is Colgate dental cream.

Says an industry analyst who tracks the company: ``HLL will be at a definite advantage concerning the share of the rural market since it started off early to tap this vast potential. The exercise will pay off well in terms of capturing raw consumers to becoming users of Lever's products.''

HLL kicked off the first phase of Project Bharat in January 1998. The first phase will be accomplished by the end of the year. The company plans to kick off the second phase of Project Bharat next year, and this will take another two years to complete.

Sehgal said that as part of the phase two plan, HLL intends to extend the sampling exercise both vertically and horizontally. While in phase one of the project, HLL sampled rural areas with population of fivethousand and upwards, the second phase will consist of those villages with population in the range of 2,000 to 5,000. Sehgal admits that the second phase will be a more expensive exercise as compared to phase one where the total budget was around Rs 20 crore.

While vertical sampling will be carried out particularly in densely populated states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which hold further scope for penetration, horizontal sampling will be done to include other personal products like hair oils, sham- poos and deodorants in areas which are well- penetrated vertically-like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

States like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Orissa which were not part of phase one, considering geographical bottlenecks, will be included in the phase two exercise, said Sehgal. As part of phase one, HLL sampled around 11.5 million rural households. Post-checks done by the company reveal that top-of-the-mind awareness among consumers in these areas has more than doubled-in the case of some brands like Fair & Lovely,even trebled. In Bihar, for instance, the top-of-the-mind awareness of brands has increased to 58 per cent after the sampling exercise, from 16.4 per cent.

Regular usage of the products has been witnessed in almost 6-7 million households which constitutes around 70 per cent of the total sample. Around 15-20 per cent have dropped out, partially due to financial constraints. This means, the company has been able to convert at least six million rural households as HLL brand consumers.

At the end of Project Bharat, the consumer base for Levers is expected to double to 20-24 million rural households.