J&J India aims to regain feminine hygiene, skin-care & OTC market shares

American personal and consumer products manufacturing firm Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) Indian subsidiary J&J India aims to regain market shares of feminine hygiene, skin-care and OTC consumer market segments from its competitors such as Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Hindustan Unilever (HUL).

J&J India is also working to reduce dependence on its near-generic Johnson’s baby care range of products that totals for half of its revenues, economictimes.com reported.

The firm said that the move follows the firm’s plans to introduce high-margin variants of its brands and enter into distribution and marketing that help stabilize its consumer market.

J&J India MD Swami Raote said that the firm plans to bring in its global portfolio to India and the baby range contribution to the overall portfolio would come down over a period of time due to the move.

"We are now looking at bringing in more products from our global portfolio and are in talks with multiple companies for acquisitions in the OTC category," added Raote.

The firm, whose Indian consumer market categories include baby care segment, women’s health, skin care products, OTC and oral and wound care segments is also in process to ramp up its network.

J&J India said that it has rolled out a high-margin variant of Stayfree to take on P&G’s Whisper, and to increase rural market penetration, it has tied up with Unicef with an aim to increase awareness of feminine hygiene among the uneducated and poor.

Under the baby care segment, J&J also has rolled out high-margin variants of baby products such as wipes, shampoo and the kids bedtime range kids at 15-20% premium over its existing range.

While in the beauty segment, the company’s skin care brand Neutrogena already has been priced at a premium over its rivals including P&G’s Olay and HUL’s Lakme and the face cleansing brand Clean & Clear competes the same space as Garnier, the report stated.

The company has recorded sales of INR27bn ($526.5m) for the year ending December 2011 with the consumer business contributing revenues of INR19-20bn ($370.4m-$390m).