Big FMCG players look to rethink their strategies in the coming twelve months as coronavirus puts a further spanner in the sector’s growth after witnessing a prolonged slowdown of a year. From increasing focus on ecommerce channels to collaborating with smaller players and regional brands, industry leaders may now look to calibrate growth strategies. In fact, one in every two industry leaders that marketing research firm Nielsen India spoke to said that they are going to review and adjust distribution strategy to focus more online in both short term and twelve months period.
“It is an agile world. Everyone is trying to reinvent themselves. They are going to revisit their strategies and above 50% of industry leaders have told us that they will chalk out new strategies after the coronavirus pandemic. One of the key strategies will be to heighten agilities. Smaller brands which can produce would like to collaborate with bigger players,” Prasun Basu, South Asia Zone President, Nielsen Global Connect told Financial Express Online upon being asked if it will be feasible for local players and bigger FMCG players to collaborate with each other.
As coronavirus lockdown led to an increase in demand of the FMCG products and supply chains were disrupted, local players and regional brands moved to plug the gap. Especially for the hand sanitizer segment, local brands have largely eaten up the market of the country’s top three hand sanitizers brands in the month of March 2020, according to Nielsen report on COVID-19 impact on FMCG sector. While top three sanitizer players in the country held 85% of the market, the same slipped to 39% in March 2020. Similar trend was also observed in the packaged rice category. Over 150 new players have emerged in the hand sanitizer category in March 2020. Some existing FMCG players such as Emami, Dabur and Marico also entered the segment anticipating high potential in the category.
