Cholayil to enter skin, personal care segments

Hyderabad, Aug 9 (UNI) The Chennai-based Cholayil Private Limited, a leading FMCG company, planned to foray into skin care and new categories of personal care segments to generate Rs 250 crore income over the next two years, leveraging its second dating soap manufacturing unit in Uttaranchal, likely to be commissioned in three months.

The company after acquiring Cuticura talc brand, the makers of Medimix soap, was planning entry into variants of personal care and skin care, including talc and deodorant.

A third party manufacturing unit for talc in Uttaranchal, was likely as a part of its expansion drive.

Of its Rs 160 crore sales last year, Rs 143 crore came from soap business. It is now targetting the rural areas to improve its market share from the current 18 per cent.

After launching the sandal variant of Medimix at Hyderabad today, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Dorcars Market Makers, the marketing arm of Cholayil Pvt Ltd M C Anand Kumar said the newly launched brand would fight for a greater share in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, which together shared nearly 45 per cent of the sandal bathing soap market in the country.

The sandal soap market accounts for Rs 700 crore of the Rs 5170 crore soap market in India.

With an aggressive marketing plan backed by a new TV commercial in the next two weeks, bill boards and media advertisements, the company was planning to offer a boutique of new products to target the mid-segment hotels from three-star upwards, to improve its institutional business, from Rs five crore last year.

The company was considering introducing new brands, as it has planned to generate Rs 500 crore business by 2010.

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