Cavin Care - a Different Route

Cavinkare 

• Major competitors of cavinkare were mainly multinational companies and local players. The multinational competition was mainly from Hindustan Lever Limited an Anglo Dutch consumer good company. Moreover it also faced competition from P&G which was also present in this sector. While Indian companies like Dabur with their hair and oral care products were in direct competition with cavinkare. While with other players like RDM traders, Godrej & Johnson & Johnson were present with low presence in the market.

• Cavinkare played the game differently in the market at that point of time when most of the competitors were focusing on giving value to customer in shampoo segment by providing benefits like lesser hair loss, dandruff free hair, no split hair, less damage to hair etc. Cavinkare prime focus was on to providing a value for money product by methodical R&D.

• Primary focus of Cavinkare was to penetrate the rural market was to tap the rural market where the use of soap for cleaning of hair was prevalent. Shampoo was considered to be essential product but rather a luxury product. Penetration of shampoo in rural area and educating about the use of the product became primary concern of cavinkare rather than selling large amount in urban household.

• Single serve sachets of shampoo by cavinkare helped to beat the competition in all markets. The time when shampoo was not considered to essential product as no visible damage was seen using soaps, cavinkare to induce trials got single serve sachets at affordable price so break through the perceived notion of shampoo being a luxurious product. They made sure that by doing small changes in quality of the product they could sell it in far less price that was affordable to people with low per capita income.

• For the purpose educating customer cavinkare went on creating awareness by radio ads and have celebrity endorsement etc. While using pull scheme of getting one free on four trial packs of shampoo created induced trials among customers. Moreover with trials van and live demo of the product and door to door sampling made sure of increase awareness and usages.

• Playing differently in the distribution of products and to increase nationwide reach, Cavinkare tapped periodic markets like haants and melas prevalent at that time in rural markets. These strategy in distribution of product made sure of increase presence in rural market and with low prices people were tend to go for trials.

• Cavinkare also made sure they have an effective cost structure so as to avoid overhead costs in manufacturing made sure they follow exclusive outsourcing. These strategies kept cavinkare ahead of competitors and by playing the game differently from competitors they were able to explore better markets then competitors.