Rural India will spend much more than urban India in the utensil cleaner market: Bonafide Research

Rising rural prosperity, awareness, level of education, social media penetration coupled with multinationals making serious efforts to tap rural India is expected to generate new opportunities in the utensil cleaning market. 

Cleaning products have become essential in the everyday life of the modern consumer. They have now become an essential commodity for customers worldwide, meaning that the market continues to grow year on year. This market tends to be more resistant to downturns in the economy than other sectors, such as construction and automobiles. This obviously presents numerous ongoing opportunities for those in the cleaning products industry. Among all the cleaning products, utensil cleaners are vastly popular in India and have comparatively higher level of penetration.

According to recently published report of Bonafide Research “India Utensil Cleaner Market Overview, 2022-2028”, utensil cleaners are growing with more than 14% CAGR from last five years. Bar segment is the most popular one in India, followed by liquid dishwashing cleaners. Basically, bar is considered to be a rural product and liquid to be an urban centric product. However, this scenario is expected to change soon as rural consumers are spending much more than urban consumers. Apart from dishwashing bars, liquid cleaners are also getting adopted in rural areas with increase in awareness and rising disposable incomes.

The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand, offers great opportunities to dishwashing manufactures. According to World Bank Statistics, urban population in India was 35% of the total population whereas rural population was 65%. Thus, two-third of total consumers of country live in rural areas and almost half of the national income is generated from rural and semi-urban areas. Social media penetration in rural India has doubled in the past few years, compared with urban India. This has helped in increasing the awareness of different brands and variants available in the market. Rural consumers, who just knew about Vim bar, are now aware about products like Vim liquid and Dettol kitchen gel. Aspiration to use products similar to urban consumers, have spurred the trial of premium offerings in rural areas.

Penetration of bar has already grown high in rural India whereas liquid cleaners are growing robustly registering a very high compounded annual rate of growth. As the rural market opportunity becomes more attractive, companies are experimenting with different strategies to tap this market. Dishwashing companies have recognized the potential of rural markets and invested time and resources to tap into this opportunity by understanding and segmenting the consumers, based on their spending and lifestyles. Multinationals like HUL, Jyothy Laboratories, Dabur and Reckitt Benckiser are effectively overcoming the challenge of establishing sales and distribution networks in rural India. Companies that master this challenge will likely set the growth benchmarks for their dishwashing brands in future.

Major companies operating in the utensil cleaner market of India are Hindustan Unilever Limited, Jyothy Laboratories Limited, Reckitt Benckiser (India) Ltd., Dabur India Limited, Rohit Surfactants Private Limited and Fena Private Limited.