Sunil Kataria, CEO- India & SAARC, of Godrej Consumer Products, spoke to CNBC-TV18 to give his perspective on the post-lockdown recovery, while adding, “The discretionary categories are also recovering, but a little slowly. Growth for essentials have picked up well. Overall, I am pretty happy with the way post lockdown recovery has started.”

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When asked about how consumption has panned out in these difficult months, Kataria said, “This quarter has been a bit of a mixed bag. There are three phases to this quarter. We had seen a great momentum in second half of this year and that momentum continued very strongly in April. May was purely a lockdown effect, and I personally believe that it fundamentally may not have changed too much on the demand side, except in a couple of areas. What we are seeing in June, is a kind of a K-shaped recovery, whereby the essentials and the products which are of day-to-day use are coming back.”

On rural demand, Kataria said, “There are clear differences in wave one and wave two. The first wave did not touch rural and this time, unfortunately 40 percent odd cases in the recorded numbers have come from the rural side. I would say this wave was much more pan India than the previous wave.”

He added, “I feel one of the most positive factors which could offset this one is the super onset of the monsoon for the third consecutive year. This could offset very fast, any negative motion which has happened because of the wave.”

On demand in categories, he said, “Across categories, there’s been a clear shift in last one year. The hygiene and personal wash category has seen much greater consumption. This is obviously a new phenomenon. That led to consumption increase and that momentum continues.”

“I expect there will be some correction, which could happen to these consumption parameters but normal would not be the past, it would definitely stay at the higher level so the personal wash and hygiene category continues to see huge momentum and that is something we believe will continue.”

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(Edited by : Dipika)