Monday, February 16, 2009

Baldness Market in India

Bill Gates says that the amount of money put behind finding cures for baldness is higher than what is spent on malaria research, for more on his TED talk, link .

But I suddenly find that baldness is becoming quite a serious issue in India, especially among the younger lot. One can see the hair loss which use to happen much later happening quite early and this is corroborated by my interaction and observation of many of this young people.
And then this problem of rapid and early hair fall has not gone unnoticed , marketers and entrepreneurs are jumping in to cash in the opportunity or should one say loss. The increase in the number of hair-fall clinics across the country and the positioning of major shampoo brands in the country is a proof for this. Dr Batra's Clinic has grown to their current size mainly based on hair-loss treatment that they offer through their clinics spread across the country. And hair fall reduction has become the new plank on which shampoo brands are competing against each other, from their earlier focus on dandruff , cleaning and nourishing.

There could be many reasons why there is sudden increase in interest on this issue, one the quality of water and food has deteriorated over the years and we actually have people loosing hair early, and alternatively earlier even if some one were to loose hair he would not care much about it , but today with more disposable income and options maybe it is giving rise to that the bald market..

4 comments:

  1. Dear Sir,
    Is hair fall clinic is a successful model in India.In the newer sense of marketing customer satisfaction is of utmost important, but i dont think that much of the customer really satisfied after treatment.So the concept of customer loyalty and retention is not applicable, as far as positioning of the clinic brand is concerned it is due aggressive promotion. But i doubt over the result orientation of the business model without any customer value.The million dollor question is how long such marketing model will depend only on rising and playing with the aspiration of customer without rendering value?

    Is the demand of product is realistic or unwholesome.


    Santosh Kumar
    PGDM in Marketing
    SCMS -COCHIN

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  2. Dear Santosh,
    The question you have raised is very relevant, but the fact is that in India we still have not reached a stage where not satifying customers would throw you out of business. One of the reasons might be the fact that we are a country with large population and probably one can afford to keep doing so for some more time to come, but eventually only those which provide real value would survive, till then the hair clinics would keep making money.

    regards

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  3. Very interesting note. Thank you, on a thicket it is necessary to write about it.
    If will be on such theme write

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  4. I love to read this thanks for this :) I appreciate for you work :)
    Hair transplant

    ReplyDelete