The giant of Indian fmcg sector, HUL from soap to food to personal care to household care has a share in every product enters into Indian household. Now the giant is trapped in Gorilla war fare across the product line. Different competitors with different strategies are on the battle field. The strategic problem evolves when the focus of different competitors is category specific and even some are competing with cost differentiation as additional one. Michael Porter’s differentiation strategies are witnessed in competitors move. Is there any loophole in the competitive strategy of HUL?

Colgate Palmolive has strong position in oral care segment and Anchor is chasing the market. The fabric care segment is unbalanced with the presence of P&G and Nirma. The market of fairness cream is populated by Emami, Garnier and Cavinkare. Ice-cream segment is a weak point for HUL as a low revenue stream. Vardilal and Mother dairy are fully focused to tap the ice-cream lovers. The hair care segment is inhabited by Cavinkare, Marico, Dabur, P&G and Garnier. Even tea market is shrunk by Tata tea and other regional players. Medimix on the regional level; Nirma and Godrej with good

geographically expansion are eroding the toilet soap market. If Fair and Lovely is a knight for HUL then Cavinkare is looking for a square of chess-board to counterattack with Fairever. It’s unusual but well expected game when a players is playing against

competitors of different strengths and at different geographical locations. The strategic problem comes when it’s a matter of resource allocation. The key insight is (don’t share with anyone _) that HUL being a part of Unilever International has to maintain a profile margin for its mother company but on the other hand P&G gets full resource support from the mother company. That is the only reason why P&G always urge HUL for price wars.

The strategic trap of HUL is witnessed by a bottleneck in the product portfolio of the company. The options for P&G are open for price war because of two reasons. Firstly, resource support from P&G International and secondly the competitive challenge will have a cascading effect on HUL. Let’s check it with an example. The products

in price war could be detergents and shampoos but the Vicks and Whisper of P&G is standing apart of competition as leading brands and providing a safe revenue to the company. But in case of HUL there is no such brand which is not in influence of warfare. The chakra vyu for HUL is active from multiple dimensions. Local players like Medimix

playing on price front. Big market leaders like Colgate Palmolive and P&G playing on their respective fronts, former on user imagery and strong brand position and later with head on strategy. It’s not easy to play price war with local players but HUL has to stop

them from invading the market. The innovative moves of project  Shakti, Project Millennium and Operation Bharat were some successful moves to solve the problem at regional and rural level. However HULdoes not have any turf to challenge P&G without a hit on its revenue. Lets view a bigger picture, HUL is in war with a bunch of companies

whose each element (particular company) is focused on a particular category. Sometime back HUL has chosen a strategy which we call proliferation. There was N number of variants of a brand from oral care to skin care segment. The objective was to give various options to consumers and then back-out the non-performing variants. HUL named it as the product line rationalization strategy. It can be witnessed by the acquisition of brand Nihar by HUL to Marico. If you look at the performance chart of the HUL for the past 20 years, the performance is mind blowing. Year 1990, HUL entered the oral care market with Close-up with gel variant and with in a span of 9 years

took 18 percent market share at the expense of Colgate, the market  leader.

There is a crucial need to strategically place brands on strong positions. The time has come to differentiate various brands and solve the mess around. It’s hard to differentiate between competitive brands and cash brands in case of HUL. It’s not a good idea to choose cashing brands for competitive moves. The only worry for HUL should be to

avoid the multiple price wars. Product line proliferation is the one of the usual way to come out of this Chakra vyu. But still there are many ways to get the competitors on their feet.

Puzzle: I have an exercise for you. Tell me why there is brand migration of Surf Excel to bar in place of Rin Shakti bar?