Brands
FY-2015: Godrej Consumer Products marketing expense up 9.2%; Good Knight is Rs 1500 crore brand
BENGALURU: Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) reported a 9.2 per cent increment in advertisement and publicity expenses (ad) in FY-2015 (year ended 31 March, 2015) at Rs 909.96 crore (11 per cent of net Total Income from Operations or TIO) as compared to the Rs 832.97 crore (11 per cent of TIO) last year. The company in its earnings release says that its household insecticides brand ‘Good Knight’ has crossed the Rs 1500 crore mark. Further, amongst GPCL’s soap brands, Godrej No. 1 has crossed the Rs 1,000 crore and Cinthol, the Rs 500 crore milestone.
Note: 100,00,000 = 100 lakhs = 10 million = 1 crore
Godrej group chairman Adi Godrej said, “Our performance in the second half of fiscal year 2015 has been much better than that in the first half. Our strong performance is on the back of a gradual recovery we are seeing in FMCG growth in India, aided by our continued focus on innovations and brand building, and supported by competitive marketing investments and enhancements in our go-to-market infrastructure. We have continued to consistently grow ahead of the market and have gained share in our core categories.”
“Our India branded net sales grew by 12 per cent led by volume growth of around eight per cent. Our international business grew by a healthy 14 per cent (in constant currency terms), in spite of the temporary challenges in our Indonesian business.In this quarter, we also increased our marketing investments significantly to capitalise on the recovery seen in the Indian FMCG market. We believe that this investment will strengthen our brands and enable us to drive further growth in the quarters ahead,” added Godrej.
In Q4-2015, GCPL ad spends at Rs 230.18 crore (11 per cent of TIO) was 57.9 per cent more than the Rs 145.8 crore (7.5 per cent of TIO) n Q4-2014 and 5.6 per cent more than the Rs 217.89 crore (9.7 per cent of TIO) in the immediate trailing quarter.
Please refer to Fig A below. During the twelve quarter period starting Q1-2013 until Q4-2015, the company’s ad spends shows a linear increasing trend in terms of absolute rupee spends as is obvious from the broken blue trend line in Fig A below. However, in terms of percentage of TIO, ad spends show a slight declining trend with a very small negative slope of the broken brown trend line because of the lower ad spend by the company in percentage of TIO(9.7 per cent of TIO, Rs 217.89 crore) in the previous quarter. The slope of brown line until Q2-2015 was upwards and positive, and had predicted ad spends of 11.05 per cent and 11.08 per cent of TIO for Q3-2015 and Q4-2015 respectively. As a matter of fact, considering the 9.7 per cent of TIO in Q3-2015, the Q4-2015 intercept of the broken brown tend line indicates lower ad expense of 10.8 per cent of TIO as opposed to the 11.003 per cent of TIO actually spent by the company.
GCPL’s lowest ad expense both in terms of absolute rupees and percentage of TIO during the period under consideration was in Q4-2015 at Rs 145.78 crore and 7.5 per cent respectively. The company’s highest ad spend in terms of absolute rupees and percentage of TIO during the period in this report was in Q1-2014 at Rs 239.06 crore and 13.8 per cent of TIO respectively.
GCPL reported 8.9 per cent growth in TIO in FY-2015 at Rs 8276.36 crore as compared to the Rs 7602.41 crore in FY-2014. Please refer to Fig B below. TIO in Q4-2015 at Rs 2092.02 crore was 8.3 per cent more than the Rs 1931.52 crore in the corresponding year ago quarter, but declined 6.4 per cent as compared to the Rs 2235.71 crore in Q3-2015. During the twelve quarter period under consideration in this report, TIO shows a linear increasing trend as indicated by the broken green trend line.
Profit after tax (PAT) in FY-2015 at Rs 907.12 crore (10 per cent of TIO) was 19.4 per cent more than the Rs 759.73 crore (12.3 per cent of TIO) in FY-2014. PAT in Q4-2015 at Rs 265.57 crore (12.7 per cent of TIO) increased 12.4 per cent as compared to the Rs 236.28 crore (12.2 per cent of TIO) and was almost flat (up 0.8 per cent) as compared to the Rs 263.57 crore (11.8 per cent of TIO) in the preceding quarter. During the twelve quarter period in this report, PAT shows a linear increasing trend both in terms of absolute rupees and percentage of TIO as in obvious from the broken red and black trend lines in Fig B below.
Segment Performance
Household Insecticides
GCPL says that Household Insecticides continued its strong momentum with a growth of 11 per cent and continued to gain market share across formats and exited Q4-2015 with highest ever market share. Good knight Fast Card continues to see strong demand and add new customers, while expanding its category reach, especially in rural.
Soaps
The company says that its Soaps business delivered another strong quarter, with a healthy volume and mix led value growth of 15 per cent. Its Godrej No. 1 and Cinthol portfolios delivered double-digit growth, backed by well executed tactical strategies involving focused activation programmes, consumer offers and marketing campaigns.
Hair Colours
Hair Colours maintained its competitive performance and delivered a volume led sales growth of 12 per cent and continues to outperform the category and gain further market share. The salience of the cr?me segment in the overall Hair Colour category continues to increase. Godrej Expert Rich Cr?me is the fastest growing brand in this segment informs the company.
Air Fresheners
Aer, GPCL’s air freshener brand, continues its strong sales and distribution ramp up. This has been aided by the company’s innovative gel format technology and consumer engagement initiatives. Aer is now the number three player in home sprays and the number two player in car air care claims the company.
Health and Wellness
GPCL says that its recently launched Health and Wellness portfolio of hand washes, a hand sanitiser and anti-mosquito spray, under Godrej Protekt, is being well received in modern trade.
“With four consecutive quarters of improvement in growth rates in the Indian FMCG sector, we are seeing a gradual improvement in demand. We remain optimistic that as the economy gathers pace in FY-2016, FMCG growth in FY-2016 will be better than that in FY-2015. While the macro-economic environment in some of our international markets remains challenging, we are confident of continuing to grow ahead of the market and improve our market share. We will continue to focus on sustaining and extending leadership in our core categories. We will also accelerate the pace of new product launches as the macro-economic environment improves and capitalise on the uptick in demand. Overall, we will strive to deliver a stronger operating performance in the fiscal year 2016,”Godrej concluded.
Click here for the Performance Update, press release and full result.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
