For a brand that once forced market leaders to rethink the very meaning of “value”, Nirma’s latest move feels like a careful reset. In the 1980s and 1990s, Nirma unseated giants like Surf by collapsing the price hierarchy of detergents, selling at a fraction of the cost and immersing itself into popular culture with a jingle involving its four iconic leading ladies — Hema, Rekha, Jaya and Sushma.
Three decades on, the company is no longer trying to win by being the cheapest. With its latest Nirma Advance campaign, ‘Tujhsa hi Nirma hai’, it is confronting a new marketing dynamic where product performance has become the primary category narrative. The value end of the market has also changed significantly, with the RSPL Group’s Ghari detergent emerging a dominant player (with 16-20% share).
But can a brand born of economy climb the value ladder without breaking its emotional contract with lower and middle-income households?
The answer matters because the market has changed almost beyond recognition. India’s detergent industry, valued at about $4.79 billion in 2024, is now dominated by Hindustan Unilever with a 38-40% share and Procter & Gamble at around 20-21%, while Nirma sits at roughly 12%, according to analysts. Competition today is less about just affordability and more about formulation claims, habit, distribution muscle and memory, say experts. When Nirma first disrupted the category, Surf was forced to deploy Lalitaji and the famous “samajhdaari” argument, reframing price into “cost per wash” to defend its premium. HUL even launched Wheel to fight Nirma in the economy trenches. That was a war of price and access. This one is about perception.
New meaning
Industry observers see this as a necessary but delicate evolution. “This is a significant shift because Nirma is attempting to add emotional depth to a brand historically built on value and access,” says Yasin Hamidani, director at Media Care Brand Solutions. “The challenge isn’t premiumisation itself, but reframing what ‘value’ means today — from low price to smart choice.” Nirma Advance is still competitively priced — about 65 for a kilogram, compared with118 for Surf Excel Easy Wash or `83 for Tide Naturals — which makes the exercise less about pricing up and more about trading consumers into a richer idea of worth.
That distinction matters. Detergents remain a habit-driven, low-involvement category, but when performance and price bands begin to blur, memory and emotion can tip the balance. “An emotion-led narrative doesn’t replace efficacy — it elevates it,” Hamidani says. Cultural memory, especially something as deeply embedded as the Nirma jingle, offers continuity and trust, provided it is handled with restraint. Lean too hard into nostalgia and the brand risks sounding dated; abandon it altogether and it forfeits one of Indian advertising’s most powerful sonic assets.
Memory meets modern
Ambika Sharma, founder and chief strategist at Pulp Strategy, sees the move as intent rather than confusion. “This is not a price brand trying to cosplay premium; it is a legacy brand leveraging emotional equity to move up the value curve,” she says.
At the centre of Nirma’s new attempt is a two-minute, high-craft film for Nirma Advance, created by agency Boing Brandvertising, that revives the country’s most recognisable detergent jingle while refusing to play it straight. The instinct to return to the tune had been brewing internally for years, but a simple replay was never going to be enough.
The agency embarked on a two-year creative process, during which multiple fully produced versions were created and scrapped. The brief was not to remix the past but to expand it. The highlight would be Nirma Advance, not the original Yellow powder. Yellow continues to sell largely on residual equity, but Advance is where the brand seems to see headroom for growth and also reinvention.
“We retained the melody of the original Nirma jingle but reimagined it in a 6/8 compound meter,” says Anand Karir, founder and chief creative at Boing Brandvertising. “In simpler terms, this gave the tune a slightly higher tempo and a celebratory, uplifting rhythm.” Equally deliberate is what the film leaves behind. There is no return to four women washing clothes in unison. Instead, the camera moves through fragments of contemporary India — a record-breaking limbo skater, a cloud kitchen entrepreneur, people choosing risk, effort and reinvention as a way of life. The characters are aspirational but relatable.
Long-game thinking is visible in the scale of the rollout. The film is airing across 100 television channels in prime time, nearly 2,000 cinema screens, and multiple digital and OTT platforms, with edits designed to foreground the familiar hook early for faster recall. But even though cultural memory like Nirma’s iconic jingle can trigger nostalgia and reinforce familiarity, nostalgia alone cannot elevate the brand or substantiate a premium repositioning, says Samit Sinha, founder & managing partner, Alchemist Brand Consulting. The heavy lifting must come from product cues, design, and consistent brand storytelling, he opines.