To start with, the company has introduced two new interdental toothbrushes.While Aquafresh Interdental is priced at Rs 33, Aquafresh Flex V-cut ispriced at Rs 28.

Apart from the trade push, the new variants are being promoted heavilythrough the electronic media.

Interestingly, this comes close on the heels of rival Oral B's launch ofOral B Advantage, a premium toothbrush priced at Rs 30 about two months ago.Apart from advertising heavily for the brand, Oral B Advantage is beingpromoted with a national consumer promotion `Winning Wheels'. A rarestrategy in the toothbrush category, Oral B's promo is clearly aimed atexpanding its consumer base and strengthening its presence in the market.

The brand apparently is making fast inroads into the premium segment and iscompeting closely with Aquafresh which has garnered a market share of 6.2per cent of the total toothbrush market with its three premium pricedtoothbrushes. The premium segment accounts for 13.8 per cent of the totaltoothbrush market according to the ORG-Marg retail audit data (all India)for the period ended March 2000.

Oral B, which is a division of Gillette Diversified, has a market share of6.4 per cent but that includes the Oral B Indicator (3.0 per cent) and thepopular priced Oral B Plus (2.1 per cent) and Prudent (1.3 per cent). Theother players are HLL's Close up Contact (1.8 per cent) and Pepsodent GumCare (1.6 per cent) and Colgate-Palmolive's Colgate Active Flexible (1.1per cent).

SBCH's marketing manager Shubhajit Sen, however, insists that the launch ofAquafresh Interdental range is part of its strategy to constantly introducenew products in a market which is driven by novelty. Says he,``it's ourstrategic intent to get the global product portfolio into the Indianmarket.''

With the launch of the interdental range, the Aquafresh toothbrush franchisehas gone up to to six. The Aquafresh range consists of Aquafresh Flex pricedat Rs 25, Flex-n-direct at Rs 30, Flexikid at Rs 20 and the AquafreshFlexofriend at Rs 45, launched in June '99. Aquafresh Flex was launched in1997.

According to Sen, the premium segment has been growing at a steady rate andis expected to grow up to 24 per cent as more and more players join in.

The company now aims to be the market leader and develop the premiumsegment.