Immunity & Hygiene figure less on shoppers' list now

Sales of products touted to have immunity-boosting properties such as Chyawanprash, honey and Ayurvedic supplements receded to the pre-Covid levels in the April-June quarter, companies and market researchers said.

In the hygiene products category, sales of hand wash and sanitisers continued to decline sequentially and were only marginally higher than the levels in June 2019 (pre-Covid), they said. Balm sales, too, tapered off to pre-pandemic levels. Sales of these products had scaled lifetime highs in 2020 and a part of 2021. To be sure, the decline in sales of these categories has been consistent for the last three or four quarters, but this is the first time that sales of some products have gone back to pre-Covid levels.

Emami's president for healthcare division, Gul Raj Bhatia, had told analysts that sales of all immunity product categories have gone back to pre-Covid levels.

"If anything, there seems to be even more pressure there...the drop is far higher than what one would have thought it is," he said. Bhatia said that while there should be some retention of consumers who entered the category during the pandemic, currently, there is no uptick compared to what it was before the pandemic.

Sameer Satpathy, CEO of personal care business at , said sales of hygiene products remained subdued while still being higher than pre-pandemic levels. "The demand for hygiene products has waxed and waned with rise and fall of Covid waves," he said. Industry executives said fall in sales of immunity products is rare in FMCG market. According to research firm Kantar, the pandemic has sped up growth for wellness products.