Strategy

Dedicated to the well-being of people, with a legacy of more than 138 years, the brand Dabur has become an epitome of goodness and health for its consumers. At Dabur, we have been marrying ancient traditional knowledge of Ayurveda with modern-day science to create products that offer a holistic approach to a healthy lifestyle and are in tune with the evolving needs of consumers across geographies and generations.

Modernising Ayurveda

By being known as the Custodian of Ayurveda, Dabur has stayed true to its rich heritage and 138 years of quality and experience legacy. Today, Dabur is the largest ‘Science-based Ayurveda Company globally. With the core belief in the Ayurveda, Dabur has always invested in substantiating the usefulness of Ayurveda and Ayurvedic ingredients by making products through a series of scientific interventions for over a century now. Dabur provides a unique platform by offering products that encapsulate the goodness of Ayurveda and are in sync with consumer preferences.

Our health care portfolio is an exceptional repository of knowledge and a strong driver of profitable growth. The fiscal year 2021-22 was tough on the Healthcare portfolio because of the high base due to Covid led tailwinds, the penetration of our Health Supplements, OTC, and Ayurvedic products continue to be very low in India. However, the developing inclination to be health-conscious, the growing ‘Back to Nature and Ayurveda trend’, the rising disease burden (particularly lifestyle ailments), and the growing preference for alternative medicines will continue to provide enormous growth opportunities for Ayurveda products and remedies in the future.

The wisdom of Ayurveda, in fact, holds the answers to many lifestyle ailments that the modern generation is facing today. We have been tirelessly working towards making traditional Indian knowledge available in a form that appeals to the contemporary consumer. Even our Personal Care and Foods portfolios have Health and Wellness as the central binding theme and incorporate natural ingredients that are good for health and nurture wholesome beauty from within.

We will continue to strategically focus on the ‘herbal and natural’ proposition as our core philosophy, both in India and abroad. In addition, the emphasis on health and wellness is our USP and makes Dabur a differentiated player in the consumer products market. Hence, we will continue to leverage this as a competitive advantage and means to increase market share in our operating categories.

Power Brands

Our brands are our strategic assets; we make sure these brands connect with our consumers not only rationally but also emotionally and deliver exceptional experiences to our consumers.

We have identified 9 Power Brands that together account for 70% of our Total Sales. These include 8 brands in India and one in the overseas markets. Most of our Power Brands operate in the Healthcare space, a category where Dabur has the natural right to win, given its 138-year heritage. This is also in line with the Company’s vision of being dedicated to every household’s health & well being.

Dabur has been aggressively sharing compelling stories of our brands via various media platforms to create awareness of our products and their features that helped createa unique positioning and lasting image in the marketplace of these brands. As a result, our brands have become the most powerful catalyst for differentiation from the competition. We also invested in broadening our brand family by launching product extensions to increase the brand’s market share in existing categories and enhance the addressable market for these Power Brands by entering more significant adjacent product categories. For instance, the year 2021-22 saw Dabur enter the MFD category under the Chyawanprash umbrella brand on the one hand while also marking its foray into the fruit drinks and carbonated beverage market with its popular fruit juice brand Réal.

We confidently and continuously invest behind our Power Brands to make them more visible, enhance distribution, and drive innovation through new product variants and format launches while growing their salience among millennials and Gen-Z. This has also resulted in higher growth for the Power Brands than the rest of the portfolio. We will continue to stay the course on our strategy and invest firmly behind our business, brands and infrastructure, besides building flanker brands for our Power Brands. We have started this flanker brand rollout with Dabur Amla and will extend it to other Power Brands.

Digital Transformation

Leveraging Digital transformation to flare growth and innovation is not a new imperative for Dabur. But the pandemic has made it urgent for us to enhance our agility, reach, and data-driven decisions. Dabur is riding high on the digital revolution by pursuing aggressive e-commerce and digital marketing strategy to tap the growing segment market size of millennials and Gen Z. To target the youth, we run specialised campaigns on various digital platforms and complement these with enhanced and easy availability of products on e-commerce and online marketplaces.

During fiscal 2021-22, almost a quarter of our marketing spending was towards digital, and we also saw our e-comm saliency increase to 6.5%. We will continue to offer modern and easy-to-use formats that are relevant and in sync with the needs of our modernday consumers. In the last two years, we have stepped on the pedal in terms of innovations which form the cornerstone of our strategy. New products contributed to around 5% of our revenue in the year.

Rural Expansion

Rural markets in India have grown significantly, and these consumers are now more aware and conscious of their buying decisions and habits. Rural masses in India have significantly propelled the Digital revolution, exposing companies to better marketing options and making villagers the potential consumers for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies. The growing affluence in the hinterland and the deeper penetration of media and smartphones have led to a sizeable jump in consumerism for branded consumer goods.

This market is one of the key strategic focus areas for Dabur. Rural India accounts for nearly 47% of Dabur’s domestic market sales, amongst the highest in the FMCG industry in India. At Dabur, we have been concentrating on increasing our direct reach to villages across the country to tap into this growing

consumer base. We have increased our distribution infrastructure and reached around 1.3 million outlets and approximately 90,000 villages. Project Yoddha has been instrumental in expanding our village coverage ahead of the envisioned target of 80,000 villages. Even the doctor coverage crossed our mark of 80,000 and is now at 81,210 at the end of fiscal 2021-22.

Our Business Strategy not only helps us to focus on immediate challenges but also is aligned with our longterm vision. We explore the business models that drive change by focusing on our competitive advantages, a purpose-driven management approach, the team’s collective efforts that matter, and becoming a catalyst for system-level change in ostensibly significant global issues, such as climate change and supply chain disruptions.