Direct-to-consumer personal care brand Mamaearth recently launched a campaign featuring mother-daughter duo Amrita Singh and Sara Ali Khan for its Onion Hair Oil. Sambit Dash, VP Marketing, Mamaearth takes us through Mamaearth’s journey, its latest campaign and marketing strategies.
Q] How would you describe Mamaearth’s journey so far? What is your USP?
Mamaearth’s journey over the past four and a half years has been quite amazing, and in many ways inspirational. What began as a parents’ effort to find toxin free products for their baby turned into a successful fast growing business. Today Mamaearth is one of the fastest growing FMCG brands in India, and Asia’s first brand with MadeSafe certified, toxin free products for moms and babies. What stands out is the dedication from everyone in the team to stick to our core of providing to millennials products that are toxin free, safe and made from natural ingredients such as onions, turmeric, honey etc.
Q] What are your thoughts on the beauty & personal care industry in India currently? What are the key trends that will drive growth for the segment?
In a country of 1.3+ billion people, personal care and beauty products’ demand will surely continue to grow. Moreover, with the penetration of smartphones, information is widely available regarding the latest products and trends, worldwide. The industry in India is poised to grow further over the next decade. The combination of online and offline retailing will lead to a wider reach. Social media platforms and market influencers ensure that new products are talked about. The younger generation is more willing and open to experimenting. India has a huge upwardly mobile population that explores the D2C segment due to the focus on quality and customisation. They crave for new customer experiences that traditional players are unable to provide. If you notice, today even the bigger players are focusing on natural products. Today’s discerning and well informed customers stand by their values and give preference to ethics and corporate social responsibility.
Q] How have the last 13 months been for Mamaearth?
Mamaearth had to pause its operations due to the pandemic but our sales picked up as soon as the lockdown was lifted. During the lockdown, consumers switched to e-commerce in a big way, and we benefited from this in our D2C channel as well. The trend has continued and has helped us ramp up. Over the last year, we’ve been engaging with consumers through our sustainability actions and further strengthening our connection with our brand purpose of ‘Goodness Inside’. Besides being PETA certified, animal cruelty free and recycling far more plastic than we consume, we’ve also started the ‘Plant Goodness’ initiative, through which we’ve planted more than 1 lakh trees in the past 10 months.
Q] Why did Mamaearth rope in mother-daughter duo Sara Ali Khan & Amrita Singh for its onion shampoo campaign?
At Mamaearth, we are constantly endeavouring to create products that are inspired by traditional remedies, and combine them with modern science to create effective solutions for our consumers. The mother daughter duo of Amrita Singh and Sara Ali Khan works really well to emphasize the fact that we are using traditional solutions that have been tried and tested by generations, and giving it the convenience of modernity. Both of them have gorgeous hair, which only makes the fit better. Over 90% of the brand building spends have been allocated to digital platforms i.e. Instagram and Facebook, Youtube, OTT etc, and we started promoting on television only earlier this year. This TV campaign has been received extremely well and is showing good business results. With Sara Ali Khan becoming the face of the brand for its hair care category, we are confident that our millennial connect will be further strengthened.
ABOUT THE BRAND
Mamaearth is Asia’s first brand with MadeSafe certified products that offer 100% toxin-free & natural baby care, skincare, and hair care products. It caters to all personal care needs of young, aspirational, and increasingly conscious Indian consumers. The brand has in a span of four years created a product portfolio of 150+ products and is the fastest-growing FMCG start-up to hit a 300 Cr run rate in India.
PROFILE
Sambit Dash is the Vice President Marketing at Honasa Consumer Pvt. Ltd with more than a decade long experience in Brand management, Digital marketing, and Social media. Dash started his career with Nestle, and after six years in brands such as NESTEA and NESCAFE, he moved on and became the Head of Marketing with YUM Brands.
Q] Tell us a bit about your brand’s recent ‘Goodness Report Card’ campaign. What role does sustainability play in your company’s overall strategic plan?
This year, to highlight the importance of sustainable choices in business, we launched our annual Goodness Report Card. It was to highlight Mamaearth’s contribution through sustainable choices. Be it in the form of planting trees, recycling plastic, or being animal cruelty free, Mamaearth has focused on environment friendly solutions in its entire value chain. Every step taken by us has an impact on the planet and we believe that each of us has the power to contribute in a small way by the choices we make. Through our initiative of ‘Plant Goodness,’ we have planted over 1 lakh trees in the last ten months. Our five year goal is to plant a million trees. We have a list of 1193 toxins on our watchlist and we ensure that none of them are present in our products. In the last year alone, we have recycled more than 1.1 tonnes of plastic.
Q] Going forward, what will be your focus areas for your brand? Do you have any new launches or campaigns in pipeline?
We believe that with our proposition of toxin free natural products, we can become relevant to more and more millennial consumers. We will continue to reach out and engage with more of these consumers and introduce our range of products in skincare, haircare and babycare.
With more than 140 SKUs in our portfolio, we continue developing and launching multiple new products every month. As a brand, we’ve been innovative in finding new ingredients, products and formats that solve our consumer’s needs. This will remain a continued focus in the coming months as well.
