New Delhi: The Indian market has massive potential and can be the source of many future innovations, British FMCG major Reckitt Benckiser (RB) Plc’s global CEO Laxman Narasimhan said Wednesday.
The company expects that the innovations will unleash the potential of the consumption class, he said while addressing a session at the CII National FMCG Summit.
“I am deeply optimistic that a lot of the future innovation will come from India. I have my eyes out for that,” Narasimhan said in his virtual address, adding that “the potential of India is massive”.
RB sells a range of hygiene products in India, including Dettol, Lizol and Harpic, while in the health segment it has some popular brands like Disprin and Strepsils.
Narasimhan also said the post-pandemic world will see a more permanent reset of consumer behaviour, and the shift that has happened towards digital is going to stay.
The pandemic phase has also led to “reimagining of the consumer’s experiences” and “conscious consumption”, he said.
“So, I think we are going to see three things — you are going to see digital… You are going to see a reimagining of consumer experiences done in a safe way and the third is a more conscious consumption,” Narasimhan noted.
The level of media consumption and its fundamentals have changed after the pandemic and the local community has even become more important, he added.
“I think the three changes are going to stick for a while. The first one is digital. Whether you are a grandmother in China, whether you are a farmer in Peru, the shift that has happened to digital, both in terms of communication but also in terms of interaction and commerce, is here to stay,” he emphasised.
According to him, it does not matter “whether you are a Tik-Tok user in New York or Moscow or Shanghai, the way you communicate has fundamentally transformed, the level of media consumption, what has happened digitally, has fundamentally changed. So digital is absolutely here to stay.”
Reimagining consumer experiences is an area which will continue to stick, particularly around connections and engagement and there would be “far more conscious consumption”, he added.
“And finally, you are going to see more value orientation, people are going to be concerned about price,” he said.
Regarding the supply chain, Narasimhan said it is going to be connected in some shape or fashion and will be more resilient.
“We actually work to make our supply chains as resilient as we can, which is going to mean certainly that we will be local where we need to and we will rely on others when we need to,” said Narasimhan.
PTI