Nirma

Nirma started By Dr. Karsanbhai Patel in 1969, is amongst the successful Indian brand. Truly, an indigenous company and brand that gave tough fight to the international companies like HLL, P&G and Henkel.

Indian Detergent market is highly fragmented market with a sale of almost 24 lakh tonnes every year. This market is growing on an average at a rate of 7-8% on the account of growing population and reach of companies to rural India.

HLL is a pioneer in Indian detergent market. It launched first synthetic detergent, Surf, back in 1959 and soon acquired national leadership position. When Nirma entered into the detergent market, HLL ignored the product with an excuse that HLL could never enter into such a cheap segment. However, Nirma’s immediate success changed the opinion of HLL’s executives.

Nirma clearly hit the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid as proposed by C.K. Prahlad. Nirma was innovative in its technique and by innovation; it does not mean that it should be only a technologically new product. Here Nirma innovated a new product line for its customers at an affordable prices and hence their mission statement is “Better Products, Better Value, Better Living”. It offered its basic detergent powder, Nirma, in an attractive package at an affordable price. Another reason for Nirma’s success story was low manufacturing costs. They carefully established backward integration with state of art manufacturing units embedded with latest technology. The kind of margins Nirma was offering to its distributors were marvellous, they were as high as 140% in shampoos and 50% in premium soaps.  Today, Nirma has become the largest detergent and the second largest toilet soap brand in India with

Late 80’s advertisement of Nirma was a major hit with punch line “ Maan gaye, aapki paar ki nazar and Nirma Super dono ko”.

Nirma went ahead with category extension with new products in premium segment. It entered into new line of toilet soaps and soon become the second largest toilet soap manufacturer in the country.  In 2000, the company also entered into hair care market with a product Nirma Shikakai.

HLL launched its detergent, Wheel, in the low segment market. Nevertheless, Nirma started frontal attack by positioning its products straight against to the HLL products like Nirma Bath against Lifebuoy, Nirma Rose against Breeze etc.  In past few years HLL has regained its position in detergent market. Strong distribution network of HLL and huge resources are creating problems for Nirma.

Currently Nirma is facing problem to penetrate deep into rural India. More over the customer needs are changing, now Indian customer is becoming more demanding and it is ready to pay high price for quality products, in this process HLL is gaining its ground. Therefore, Nirma has two options to go ahead first to concentrate only on bottom of pyramid and develop a huge distribution network to reach to every corner of the country and other is to cater to needs of growing middle class, which is a primary target customer of all the companies. Both the strategies have their own pros and cons, let us wait and watch which strategy makes Nirma the largest consumer durable company in years to come.