Building beauty & digital capacities HUL's top priority

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

HUL) managing director Rohit Jawa said building beauty and digital capabilities is top priority and disproportionately important for the company's future in the country.

HUL, market leader in the beauty market with brands such as Lakme and Ponds, will split its beauty and personal care division from April, with a new beauty head, and has also created a new role to push its digital agenda.

«The beauty care market will grow exponentially and create way more value in the decades to come if its per capita consumption is anywhere near even Southeast Asia, forget China. So the primary motive for doing this is to create the focus and specialisation for different competitive sets.

Some of them are indeed digital, but digitalisation is more secural and more pervasive, not just to do with a specific segment of players,» Jawa told investors on an earnings call.

«And, of course, because it's margin accretive, this higher growth would be actually good for the company. The beauty mandate is to increase the level of growth, grow the portfolio, go to faster growth, (create) new demand spaces and essentially be the best in class beauty company or beauty unit in the country,» he said.

Experts said the move is also driven by increasing competition, especially from direct-to-consumer players which have mainly entered the beauty segment.