Celebrities like Neena Gupta, Divya Dutta, Bhumi Pednekar, Tisca Chopra, Sameera Reddy have been associated with the baby products brand in the past.
We have witnessed a number of Ayurvedic brands vying for a mass appeal in the D2C space, however, not many of them have succeeded in putting in place a well formulated strategy to achieve the feat. Among the few who have been able to carve an impressionable niche is Mother Sparsh, an Indian baby and mother care brand. In an exclusive conversation with India TV, Mother Sparsh Co-founder and CEO Dr Himanshu Gandhi shared views about the brand's marketing approach, association with celebrities and the roadmap to enter the 100 crore club. Here are excerpts from the conversation:
As you are eyeing to enter the 100 crore club, is aggressive celebrity/influencer engagement helping you achieve the required growth rate?
Mother Sparsh has always adhered to an omnichannel approach, whether it is with regard to product distribution or marketing activities to reach out to a wider ambit of consumers. Celebrity and influencer engagement too is a key part of our marketing strategy to tap majority of customer segment. It is one focus area where we have given increased impetus over the past few months or say, a year. In the recent past, we worked with many eminent celebrities and influencers, such as Neena Gupta, Divya Dutta, Bhumi Pednekar, Tisca Chopra, Sameera Reddy, Kishwer Merchant, Dipika Kakar, Meghna Raj Sarja, Shikha Singh, Nisha Agarwal and Veebha Anand. Apart from it, we have conducted multiple campaigns comprising celebrated mom bloggers, lifestyle bloggers and nearly 5000 nano and micro influencers. All these activities have undoubtedly contributed majorly to our multifold growth of late, which effectively sets the base for our entering the 100 crore club.
Why did the brand opt for a D2C approach? Tell us about your website sales.
The driving forces for Mother Sparsh have always been innovation and product development on a need based proposition. Even before we launched our first product, which is 99% Pure Water unscented bio-degradable baby wipes, we spend a good couple of years in thorough R&D wherein we tried to understand the real needs of millennial moms and their little ones. The market trends do not determine our initiatives, rather they are dictated by the actual needs of our target consumers and the persistent gaps in the market. Taking a D2C approach complements our brand ethos as it helps us connect directly with the end consumers, get their first hand feedback and use the same in determining our subsequent course of action, including product portfolio diversification.
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Our website sales too depict our acceptance as a formidable D2C brand among our consumers. During the past three months, the website sales have registered a phenomenal three-time growth. We now intend to clock an unprecedented multi-fold growth in our overall sales and our recent endeavour of inducting marketing stalwart Himanshu Chandel in our leadership fold is a major step in that regard.
Mother Sparsh Co-founder and CEO Dr Himanshu Gandhi
Is there any difference in profit margins while opting for the D2C approach compared to profit margins from established ecommerce platforms?
The initial stage of D2C is cost intensive because of logistic expenses, returns for an order along with the other processes of directing traffic to the website. Therefore, it is definitely a very costly affair. But seeing the long run and with providing a good quality product, a user’s intent goes for repeat buying so as creating a loyalty for the brand and hence it will definitely impact the profitability and overall good for company’s health.
After leading the market in the baby wipes segment, what products Mother Sparsh is planning to go big on in future?
Mother Sparsh has earned its respectable position as a brand owing to wide array of innovative, need-based and nature-oriented products for babies as well as current generation of millennial moms. From 99% Pure Water unscented baby wipes to Turmeric Healing Range and one-of-its-kind Dashmoola Hair Lep, we have made products available for all possible specific personal care needs in the segment.
Going forward though, we are analyzing all possible options and we see great potential in the personal care category, especially in the hair and skin care space, which incidentally happens to be amongst our core competencies.
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Going forward, what do you expect from the market in the personal care and baby care segment?
The market is definitely in a phase of significant growth. If estimates are to be believed, India's beauty and personal care market is expected to reach 37.2$ billion by 2025 from 26.9 billion in 2021 with 12.5% CAGR. It is important to understand at this point that when we talk about baby care segment - especially natural baby care segment - in particular, it is possibly in its post-nascent phase with great potential for remarkable growth. Our own R&D findings, however, suggest that the consumer is in dire need of such nature-oriented solutions. We at Mother Sparsh for instance are expanding inventory line and marketing, so we are very confident that we will be able to fulfill the needs of prospective as well as existing consumers.
We are focusing on marketing mix while scaling up multiple inventory line. We are aggressively working towards increasing the website sale as well as other market places to set the trends while achieving multi-fold growth.
What are your expansion and funding plans?
As you are aware, we are eyeing to enter the 100 crore club by end of FY-23 and all our existing as well as future plans are channelized in that direction. As the initial steps, we have already implemented our product diversification strategy, which focuses on serving specific purposes of little ones and their millennial moms. For instance we are introducing innovative healing products for anti-aging, skin tightening for collagen boosting, under eye protection etc. But the overall roadmap is much wider and omni channel-driven, putting adequate impetus on pivotal aspects like marketing, customer service, wider presence – though we are already catering to consumers across 23 states – increased channels of sales etc. At present, we are on track for attaining 50 crore Annual Run Rate and have been scaling our overall customer acquisition with 35% Month-on-Month growth rate. We are expanding the overall inventory line Month-on-Month to meet the fast growing consumer needs as well scaling up our digital media mix.
