What will be the impact of the takeover of Coco Care from Recon Oil Industries by HLL, on Marico's flagship brand Parachute?

There will be no impact on Parachute's market share. In fact, we expect that Parachute will see a further rise in its market share. While their (HLL's) overall share has gone up with the brand acquisition, it does not impact the market share of Parachute which leads with a 53 per cent share.

With Coco Care now in rival Levers' fold, what strategies will Marico adopt to combat an expected onslaught by HLL brands on Parachute's territory?

When we undertook marketing initiatives in the past (for Parachute), we took into consideration the fact that HLL will buy weaker brands (such as Coco Care). HLL's acquisition does not come as a surprise to us. We expect HLL to attempt taking over other weaker brands in addition to Coco Care in future. We are well equipped to face this situation. A series of our strategies in all aspects of marketing will unfold as and when required. We cannot reveal our strategies for obvious reasons of it being competitive information.

Market observers are wary that following the brand acquisition, HLL will attempt to do a Colgate on Marico: that is, the dwindling market share situation which Colgate faces in dental care, may befall Parachute in the future. Do you agree?

The overall strategy which we have adopted so far, and which will unveil from time to time, takes into account that HLL is the key competitor. We had anticipated it way back in 1992, that HLL would be the key competitor. Since then we have prepared ourselves to face this kind of competition by taking various initiatives in addition to our foray into value-added coconut hair oil market. We knew that the weak competition scenario which we witnessed all this while would soon change in the future, and we decided to equip ourselves to face the competitive scenario. If you recall, even at the time of the relaunch of Nihar by HLL, people thought that Parachute would lose market share. This has been proved wrong. Parachute's share has, in fact, gone up over the last one year.

Why do you think Nihar failed to make an impact on Parachute, even though it is said to have garnered over 12 per cent market share since its relaunch?

Both Nihar and Coco Care are price-warrior brands. Their prices have always remained at a discount to market leader Parachute. Nihar's aggressive pricing strategy thus impacted Coco Care's share, leaving Parachute to continue on its growth track. Coco Care, which had a good market presence a few years back, has seen a dip in market share to around 8 per cent today. Hence, Nihar has had an impact on other weak brands, not Parachute.

Do you think that with two brands in its portfolio, HLL may go in for a different pricing strategy for each of the brands and pitch one on a premium plank and slot the other in the popular segment? Given such a scenario, what would be Marico's counter strategy?

We cannot comment on HLL's strategy. We already have a clear pricing strategy for our brands. We cannot say now what will come about in the future.