Research and analytics firm Nielsen has slashed its 2020 growth forecast for the FMCG sector. It expects the sector to shrink by about 3 percent as it sees the recent recovery being stalled by headwinds in the economy.

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K Ullas Kamath, Joint Managing Director, Jyothy Laboratories spoke to CNBC-TV18 about demand trends.

“November has been better than October and October has been better than September. On the ground it looks absolutely positive, especially in the rural sector it is growing faster than urban,” he said.

In the hygiene segment, Kamath said product availability was no longer an issue, and that the panic buying seen in the first couple of months of the lockdown was no longer there.

“The panic is not there to the extent what we saw the growth in the first quarter and beginning of the second quarter, we are not able to see that kind of growth for the demand as such. But it is moving in the market place and more hygiene product getting into households or the offices but not the way how people used to buy at a premium in the first quarter or beginning of the second quarter,” he said.

On specific segments Kamath said, “85 percent of our business are growing extraordinarily well and 15 percent is still challenging, probably another quarter or so,” he said

“Handwash is doing extremely well. Dishwash is growing at about 26.5 percent in the last quarter. Household insecticides segment and mosquito repellants is also growing, here the insight is that people don’t want to fall sick or don’t want to get fever or malaria etc,” he said.

“Fabric care segment, in that the regular wash we are still minus 11 percent which was minus 20 percent in the first quarter now we are minus 11 percent,” he said.

For entire interview, watch video

(Edited by : Santosh Nair)

First Published:Nov 27, 2020 11:36 AM IST